A TRIBUTE TO Professor Richard A. Lockshin on his 70th birthday

When it comes to the field of cell death, it is easy to pick the names of individuals who have made significant and invaluable contributions to the field in the past two decades. However, we sometimes overlook the invaluable contributions made by early pioneers in the area that helped to establish the importance of cell death as a field of study. One of these pioneers, who has remained a major contributor over the past 20 years is Richard A. Lockshin. Born in Mansfield Ohio in December of 1937, Richard developed a fascination and interest in the natural sciences from an early age and this attraction led him to pursue a career in science. He was educated at Harvard University where, in 1959, he obtained his bachelor's degree. This was followed by doctoral studies at Harvard University under the guidance of Carroll Williams, Lockshin focused mainly on developmental cell death in insects [1–4] and for which he received his Ph.D. in 1963. In 1964, Lockshin and Williams published their landmark contribution on ‘Endocrine potentiation of the breakdown of the intersegmental muscles of silkmoths’, in which they coined the term, ‘programmed cell death’ during a time when little research was being carried out on this topic [1]. Following completion of his Ph.D. studies Richard's interest in developmental biology took him to the University of Edinburgh, as a postdoctoral fellow, where he studied until 1965. Richard then returned to the USA to take up a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He remained there as a member of the faculty for ten years before moving to St. John's University, where he is Professor of Biology. The teaching record of Richard Lockshin is exemplary, as he trained many undergraduate and graduate students. Since his arrival at St. John's in 1975, his laboratory has produced over 30 Ph.D. and M.S. graduates. Approximately half of his doctoral students are now in academic positions and most of the M.S. candidates went on to medical, professional, or graduate programs. He has been, and indeed remains, a role model and mentor to young researchers and faculty all over the world. Recognizing the need to make science accessible to non-scientists, he authored a book entitled ‘The Joy of Science’ to help students understand the scientific method and its many implications [5]. His has received many honors and awards over the years. These include the Outstanding Achievement Award (St. John's University), 1987; the Presidential Award (Long Island University, 1987); the Outstanding Achievement Award (for work with high school science students), New York City, 1982; and Keynote speaker at many international and national meetings and conferences. Since his graduate school days, Lockshin's research has focused mostly on cell death, a field that now boasts over 200,000 publications. Horvitz (one of the recipients of Nobel Prize in 2002) and Lockshin reciprocally acknowledged that they benefited from each other's work, and both pointed out the possibility that cell death may be a regulated process. Their observations led to later work toward elucidating the genetic pathways of programmed cell death. Lockshin's work on programmed cell death complemented the landmark studies by Brenner, Saunders and Horvitz which eventually lead to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002 [6]. Richard Lockshin has made significant contributions to the ‘cell death’ community. He was one of the founders of the International Cell Death Society and acted as the society's President from 1998 through 2002. He was a recipient of the award for great contributions to the field given biannually at the meeting by the International Cell Death Society. Other recipients include John Kerr, Shigekazu Nagata, Peter Krammer, Junying Yuan and Robert Horvitz. Lockshin was also founding Chair of the first Gordon Conference on Cell Death (1996). He has been a member of the Editorial Boards of Cell Death and Differentiation since 1994; Apoptosis since 2000, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry since 2004. He was a chairman at the opening session on the first Nobel Conference on Apoptosis: Molecular Mechanisms and Medical implications in 2001, and one of the organizers of the very first Cold Spring Harbor conference on Cell Death in 1990. In addition to in excess of 100 publications, he authored and edited together with Ivar Bowen the first comprehensive book in the field with a title: Cell Death in Biology and Pathology, which still remains a valuable source of information for many researchers [7]. More recently he has coedited two other books on principals of cell death in collaboration with his wife and colleague Zahra Zakeri [8, 9]. These volumes have been used by many as handbooks on cell death and as textbooks by young researchers. For many years Lockshin has studied signaling mechanisms underlying cell death as well as the proteases involved in the killing mechanism. Lockshin and Zakeri were among the first to identify and report on alternative cell death programs. Currently his research focuses on two major directions; one on proteases other than caspases and the other on acquisition and signaling by an embryo of the ability to undergo apoptosis. Lockshin's enthusiastic and indefatigable efforts have helped in the establishment of cell death as a new discipline in biology. Cell death is now one of the most dynamic areas of biological research - spanning a multitude of fields such as development, cell and organ homeostasis, aging and a number of disease states. Richard Lockshin has made a truly significant contribution to this field and I feel that it is timely to pay tribute to him at the start of the Apoptosis Review Series, which coincides with his 70th birthday in December 2007.