In Memoriam
Louis Delbaere
1943 - 2009
We were greatly saddened last week by the sudden loss of Prof. Louis Delbaere, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of the Canadian Light Source.
Dr. Delbaere spent 30 years teaching and conducting research at the Department of Biochemistry, at the University of Saskatchewan. X-ray crystallography was not only his career; it was also his passion. He published widely in this field, and contributed to the success of his graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. He was a member of numerous scientific organisations; former president of the American Crystallographic Association, and was recently elected to the board of the International Union of Crystallography. Louis was a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Structural Biochemistry and a beamline team leader at the Canadian Light Source.
An internationally renowned crystallographer and an acknowledged leader among his peers, Louis was a true scholar and gentleman. Louis was involved with the CLS from the very beginning. He represented the Canadian protein crystallography community at one of the first planning meetings held in Montreal, and was a key member of the team that successfully made the case for the creation of a Canadian synchrotron.
After the CLS was founded he became a Beam Team Leader of the first protein crystallography beamline. He invented the name, Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (CMCF), since he envisioned that it would be composed of more than just one beamline. Louis was a dear friend of the CLS and we will all greatly miss him.
The obituary is available here: http://www.legacy.com/CAN/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=134126257
Last modified: 2012-01-19 17:01:46