Dear Ed,

I only met Marty Gorovsky a few times at Ciliate meetings including the one at Pingree Park in 1983 and one at Cold Sprint Harbor in 1984.  Although I was then only a fresh graduate student without speaking good English, I found him easy accessible and friendly to talk with us.  When I asked him a question about ciliate transformation, it was then one of the bottleneck for ciliate molecular biology, he was very nice and thoughtful.  I remember that when I was a graduate student in your lab, you frequently talk about not only his rigorous scientific research, but also kind and radiate personality of Marty Gorovsky.  

I am aware he was one of the major early driving forces for ciliate molecular biology. He made the key contributions in many areas.  He recognised the unique ciliate genetics could be very helpful for unlocking secretes of many fundamental problems in biology in general.  He was right and had farsighted vision.    

I am very sorry that ciliate community lost a giant and a force of nature to push the ciliate research to new height.   

Shuguang Zhang
MIT Media Lab
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> On 24 Oct 2019, at 09:34, Ed Orias <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Dear all.
> This is devastating news. Marty was one of the greatest molecular biologists to take advantage of Tetrahymena to answer fundamental scientific questions. While I did not have the privilege of being directly mentored by him, I always benefited from his critical comments. The Tetrahymena Genome Project would not have been gotten off the ground without his essential contributions. My condolences to his family and to the Ciliate community.
> Eduardo Orias