[3dem] Marc Adrian

[Henning Stahlberg]

... here is my little story on Marc:
When I started my PhD in the Dubochet lab, I was very much lost with this ominous technique called cryo-EM.
Marc Adrian was there, and I decided to ask him to rescue me and teach me EM.  He said he didn't want to get overburdened, but he offered me to answer one single question per day. My task was to think well about what would be most important, and then ask him that one question the next morning.

This is what I did for the next several years. In the mornings, we usually (tried to) load a cryo-EM grid into our CM12s and then the entire crew of the Dubochet lab went for a coffee in the sun at the border of the beautiful lake Geneva. On the way to the coffee place, I usually asked Marc my one question, and he always gave the very same answer: He held out his hand and said "5 Franks, that is what it costs you today". He then always laughed, took his (empty) hand back, and answered my question in the fullest detail.   This is how I learned cryo-EM.

I am deeply thankful to him for that, and the great time we had in the lab with him.

Henning.


Henning Stahlberg, PhD
Prof. for Structural Biology, C-CINA, Biozentrum, University Basel
Mattenstrasse 26 | D-BSSE | WRO-1058 | CH-4058 Basel | Switzerland
http://c-cina.org<http://c-cina.org/> | Tel. +41-61-387 32 62 | mailto:Henning.Stahlberg at unibas.ch



On Jan 8, 2014, at 10:56 PM, Jacques Dubochet wrote:

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am sad to inform you that Marc Adrian died recently in his home in Burgundy.

Marc is the one who, after Alasdaire McDowall discovered how water can be vitrified for electron microscopy, found in 1982-3 that the best specimens are obtained just by blotting away a drop of suspension from a bare grid (later from a perforated supporting films) before letting it fall into liquid ethane. He is also the one who, among a bunch of people putting their pride in only taking micrographs very close to Scherzer's focus, found that  wild defocus makes beautifully visible things that should not be. There is more.
Marc was a free, creative and generous human being of wide-ranging culture.
We worked together for 23 years. It was a beautiful time. I am deeply thankful to Marc.
Remember him the next time you use the "Adrian" method.
I address my sincere condolences to his wife Josiane and his son Gilles.

Jacques Dubochet
Honorary professor in biophysics
DEE, Biophore, 3203
University of Lausanne
CH-1015-Lausanne
Jacques.Dubochet at unil.ch<mailto:Jacques.Dubochet at unil.ch>


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