Paul F. Cranefield Award to Daniel H. Cox

The late Paul F. Cranefield, M.D., Ph.D. was the Editor of the Journal of General Physiology for 30 yr, from 1966 to 1995. During this time he worked incessantly to further the mission of the Journal : to promote and publish studies at the interface between biology, chemistry, and physics in order to obtain insights into fundamental mechanisms that underlie biological function at all levels. When Dr. Cranefield stepped down as Editor, the Council of the Society of General Physiologists acknowledged his numerous contributions to the Journal , and thus to the Society, by instituting the Paul F. Cranefield Award, which should go to a young investigator who in the preceding year had published an article of exceptional quality in the Journal . The award would be given at the Annual Meeting and Symposium of the Society, which takes place in Woods Hole, MA, and the criteria for selecting the awardee should be so stringent that the award might not be given every year. Despite these high standards, there were many outstanding candidates. One stood out, namely Daniel H. Cox from the Department of Neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine, who has made many important contributions toward understanding the regulation of Ca 2 -activated potassium channels. Dr. Cox accepted the Award at the September, 2003, meeting of the Society. Dr. Cox received his Ph.D. from Tufts University, where he worked in the laboratory of Kathleen Dunlap and studied calcium channel function. He received his postdoctoral training with Richard W. Aldrich at Stanford University, where he began his studies on Ca 2 -activated potassium channels. This was an exciting time in the Aldrich lab, as evidenced by a long series of distinguished articles—published in the Journal of General Physiology —having various combinations of D.H. Cox, J. Cui, and F.T. Horrigan in the author list. The aim of these studies was to understand the allosteric linkage between the Ca 2 -dependent and the voltage-dependent channel gating. In these studies Dr. Cox also demonstrated his impressive quantitative capability to develop a powerful analytical model for dissecting the influence of Ca 2