One hundred years ago, Félix d’Hérelle introduced the world to the word “bacteriophage” in his scientific publication “Un microbe invisible qui s'oppose au bacille de la dysenterie”. With it, the field of phage biology was born. Unfortunately, this centennial of phage research was not kind to the phage community, as we lost two giants in the field.

On February 12, 2017 at the age of 80 years Dr. Hans-W. Ackermann passed away in Québec City. Among his major contributions, Hans founded the Félix d’Hérelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses in 1982, which is today the world’s largest collection of reference phages (www.phage.ulaval.ca). In addition to being a good swimmer and a long-distance runner, he was a highly skilled electron microscopist and was probably the scientist who had seen the most bacteriophages. His remarkable memory of phage literature and expertise in taxonomy leave a gaping hole in our field.

On August 15, 2017 at the age of 75 years, Dr. Roger Hendrix passed away in Pittsburgh. An accomplished musician and a former PhD student of Dr. James Watson at Harvard, Roger was also the keynote speaker at the 2011 CSM meeting held at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He made seminal discoveries about the structure, assembly, and evolution of phages that we are teaching today in our virology courses. His excitement about science, phages and wordplay (e.g., “All the World’s a Phage” and “Phage are people too!”) will be sorely missed.

Sylvain Moineau, Université Laval
2017 CSM Murray Award Winner
Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophages
 

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