With all the recent good news in the ciliate community, I am saddened to
bring some very sad news. I have just been informed (see below) by Henrik
Nielsen that Jan Engberg passed away on December 20, 2004 after a brief
illness. I was not aware that he had been ill and know nothing other than
what is in the note below. I will contact his wife Nanni Din as soon as I
am able to.

Although Jan has not worked with Tetrahymena for a number of years now,
many of you know him from his pioneering work with ciliates, mostly with
Tetrahymena rDNA. Even after he left the ciliate field, he remained
interested and he kept up somewhat with the field and was certainly very
excited with the advances with the genome sequence. Although I hadn't seen
him for a few years, he and I brainstormed by e-mail on a number of
occasions about exciting things to do with the advances being made with
Tetrahymena genomics.

Jan was a postdoc in my lab but even more, a longtime close friend and
colleague. Those of you who knew him will remember his dynamic enthusiasm
and his worldliness, his passion for life, and his compassion, as well as
the exceptional science he did and his contributions to the ciliate
community. A very sad occurence and he will be greatly missed by his
colleagues, and of course by his many friends and family. As Henrik says
in his note, those of us who knew him and those fortunate enough to have
worked with him all learned a great deal from him and were richer from
knowing him.

      Ron


Dr. Ronald E. Pearlman           [log in to unmask]
Professor, Dept. of Biology
Director, Core Molecular Biology Facility
York University
4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Phone:416-736-5241; FAX:416-736-5698

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 20:40:02 +0100
From: Henrik Nielsen <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Jan Engberg

 Dear Ron,
 I am sad to inform you of the death of Jan Engberg on Monday, Dec. 20th.
Jan died at the age of 60 from a colon cancer that was diagnosed only two
month earlier. I was not in contact with him during this period, but Nanni
has informed me that he was not in pain. I attended his funeral in
Søllerød Kirke on Dec. 28th.  together with around 200 members of the
family, friends and colleagues. The service was given by one of Jans
cousins, Bishop Niels Henrik Arendt, and the hymns were a tribute to life.
Another cousin, Morten Zeuthen, played an extract from a Bach cello suite.
The service was very much given in Jans spirit and reminded me of the many
things I learned from him.

Yours,

Henrik Nielsen