Professor Shang yin Gao (1909–1989): His legacy in insect cell culture and insect virology

Abstract

It is both a great pleasure and an honour for me to give the annual Founders’ Lecture of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology. That the 2006 meeting is being held in Wuhan, China, is a golden opportunity to honor a man who made a seminal contribution to the field of invertebrate pathology and who was a pioneer in China, Professor Shang yin Gao, also known as Gaw Shan yin in the older literature (Fig. 1). I compliment the Founders’ Lecture committee for their insight in honoring this distinguished Chinese scientist at our meeting in Wuhan. It is also very appropriate to address you today since we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology by Professor Gao. And finally, it is a personal pleasure to look back at my personal connection with Professor Gao and his legacy, which culminated in intensive and fruitful collaborations for almost 15 years with the Institute he founded. I had the good fortune to meet Professor Gao personally on two occasions. The first time was in Prague in 1978, when Professor Gao was invited to attend the SIP meeting. We did not get a chance to talk, but this was compensated a year later when he attended the SIP meeting in Gainesville, FL, from where we travelled together to College Station, TX, to visit Dr. Max Summers, who is now known for his studies on baculoviruses and polydnaviruses. We flew in a small airplane and I was seated next to Professor Gao. However, one seat did not fit his size and I changed one seat over and a lively discussion followed. He was very interested in what I was doing, in particular the molecular methods that I used at that time to identify baculoviruses using restriction enzymes. He invited me to come to China which, however, did not materialize until after his death. I vividly remember his openness and frankness, quite