OBITUARIES

Anthony San Pietro, Indiana University
Jim Siedow, Duke University
David Walker, FRS, Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield
Pat Richter-Cherry, ASPP Business Manager, 1977 to 1978
Bob Rabson, (retired) Department of Energy
Gerry Berkowitz, University of Connecticut
Winifred Klein
Page Morgan, Emeritus Professor, Texas A&M University
Louise E. Anderson, University of Illinois at Chicago
Andre Jagendorf, Cornell University
Garth Everson, Human Research Ethics, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital
Jack Preiss, Michigan State University
Losanka Popova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
J. Michael Robinson, Research Plant Physiologist (retired), USDA–ARS
Robert K. Togasaki, Professor Emeritus, Indiana University
Grahame Kelly, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Erwin Latzko, Professor Emeritus, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany
M. L. Champigny, CNRS
J. Shen-Miller,University of California
Robert S. Bandurski, Doctorus Honorus, Michigan State University

I first met Martin (Marty) Gibbs in 1965 when he attended a symposium in Yellow Springs, Ohio, titled “Non-Heme Iron Proteins: Role in Energy Conversion.” In 1968 I was honored to accept his invitation to serve on the editorial board of Plant Physiology. During my 12 years on the editorial board and one-year tenure as an associate editor, Marty and I developed a very close friendship. We continued to meet at a number of meetings thereafter, some of which we served as coeditors.

Until two years ago, Marty and I served for a number of years on the Panel for the Annual Review of the Biological Hydrogen Production Program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. During these meetings, Marty continually amazed me by his total recall of information he and his colleagues had collected as well as from published information. In addition, he was knowledgeable in both plant physiology and biochemistry and had published with a well-known biochemist, Bernie Horecker. His knowledge was not confined to science but extended to current affairs and beyond.

Marty was a Multi Personna—he was the Total Person. A husband like no other, who provided loving care to his wife, who used a wheelchair because of a medical disability. One had only to watch Marty care for Karen to know the meaning of true love. His closely knit family attests to the love and affection his children and grandchildren felt toward their father and grandfather.

His scientific accomplishments are quoted widely, and his editorial success, I believe, is probably unmatched. As a friend his willingness to do for others was boundless. I can personally attest to all he did for me during our 40-year friendship and especially his support for my membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Although Marty has gone to join his beloved Karen, he will be remembered always by those of us who were privileged to call him a friend.

Anthony San Pietro
Indiana University

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Marty Gibbs was an interesting character and one who engendered all kinds of responses among those he dealt with within the Society. I certainly knew who Marty was long before I joined the Society in 1976 and was reasonably well versed in the debates relating to the existence, or not, of C4 photosynthesis in maize. However, two events happened within the space of a year that allowed me to get to know Marty much better. I joined the Executive Committee of the Society in October 1986, and roughly a year later Marty invited me to become an associate editor of Plant Physiology. This was a particularly interesting time for the Society. There was much concern about the perceived inability of the Society to attract the new breed of scientists who were known generally as “plant molecular biologists,” either into the Society as members or to Plant Physiology as authors. To add to the mix, at that time the editor-in-chief served on the Executive Committee, which made it somewhat problematic to have a truly open discussion about the journal as Marty was notorious for his ability to filibuster, for want of a better term, the Executive Committee on issues about which he felt relatively strongly, which in those days represented just about any issue related to the Society. Indeed, it was only after the Constitution was changed in 1987 to have the chair of the Publications Committee replace the editor-in-chief on the Executive Committee that the issue of how to attract these newer plant biologists went forward and, ultimately, The Plant Cell came into being. Oddly enough, Marty’s strong opposition to the possibility of changing the highly successful Plant Physiology to address the concerns about molecular biologists not finding it an attractive venue in which to publish may well have done the Society a real service at the end of the day. I doubt that any changes, cosmetic or otherwise, that we could have made to Plant Physiology at that time would have had the impact that The Plant Cell has had. I also do not think that initiating a second journal would have been as likely an outcome had Marty not been as opposed to addressing the concerns cited above through changes in Plant Physiology. Support him or not, Marty was a towering figure within the Society, and both his support for and his opposition to various new ideas had a very seminal effect on the Society and have in many ways driven us as a society to where we find ourselves today. It is undoubtedly safe to say that no single individual will ever again be in a position to have as much influence on the Society as Marty did. He was truly one of a kind.

Jim Siedow
Duke University

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Marty was already a leader in his field when, newly arrived in the United States to work with Harry Beevers, I first met him at a conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1953. I had yet to finish my PhD, but he greeted me more like an equal than a raw apprentice. Subsequently, we were to meet many more times, in each other’s labs and in more places than I can remember. On more than one occasion we stayed in each other’s home. So I came to recognize a family man of great warmth, integrity, and loyalty. I enjoyed his friendship, his sociability, and his hospitality, and I admired his science and valued his example.

If I were asked to recall and relive one cherished moment, it would be one that took place—in what might well be described as a spit and sawdust pub—in Riverside, California. There we sat together, at peace with the world, eating hot chili and drinking cold beer, for an hour or so of rare relaxation that was both a delight and a privilege.

David Walker, FRS
Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield

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Undoubtedly, everyone will extol the accomplishments of Marty Gibbs as a scientist and an educator, and rightfully so. My memories are of Marty Gibbs the boss, the man.

I first really met Marty Gibbs when Houston Baker, then business manager, resigned and left the ASPP headquarters office without a “leader.” Since I had some experience with the everyday running of the office, I was asked to take over until a replacement could be found. Marty was hesitant, I am sure, but willing to work with me nonetheless. He was a tough, rigid, totally in-charge editor, and sometimes a little scary—on the surface. (Underneath, he was a real softy.)

He was unwavering in his devotion to Plant Physiology and fiercely defensive of his editors. He could make you shudder and then turn right around and defend you. The editorial leadership was his, and everyone knew it! I remember one time I suggested that a fax machine might save his precious “number of days to publication” a few days or maybe even weeks. Faxing was new, and according to Marty, not proven yet. So, we stuck with snail mail. (E-mail was not even an option in the early 1970s.)

Marty was also a great storyteller and could relate fascinating stories of his travels. He told me that, once in the USSR, he had to share a sleeper train car with his translator. The KGB would, on occasion, put a female in the train car to “lure” information out of the scientists. And that great little American flag on his dinner table was not to honor the USA, but rather to let everyone know that Marty was American and to “stay away.” Marty never failed to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, or to make out-of-town visitors feel at home. He was devoted to his wife Karen, and together they made me feel welcome on my visits to Boston. Marty was certainly many things to many people, but mostly, in my opinion, he was a true gentleman and a gentle man.

Pat Richter-Cherry
ASPP Business Manager, 1977 to 1978

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I am much saddened by the death of Marty Gibbs. He was a very good friend in addition to a very active plant biologist.

I knew Marty for well over 30 years. We used to get together at the annual meetings of the Society. Occasionally my wife Eileen and I would visit Marty and his wife Karen at their Boston home, not far from our daughter’s home. During our visits we would talk about many things in plant biology. We would of course discuss Marty’s professional activities, including his long-term editorship of Plant Physiology. We would talk about friends we both had, including Folke Skoog, Oliver Nelson, and others. On one or two occasions, Marty took us to visit Eli Romanoff, retired from the National Science Foundation, and his wife Louise.

All in all we had good times together. It is a sorrowful thing to have such a leader in plant biology—and good friend—leave us.

Bob Rabson
(retired) Department of Energy

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While a graduate student enrolled in the Institute of Photobiology of Cells and Organelles at Brandeis University, I made a batik tee shirt showing the caricature of a head with the top popped open. A green plant was growing up from inside this head. Underneath the figure was written “Institute of Photolobotomy of Cells and Organelles.” I presented this shirt as a gift to my research adviser, Dr. Martin Gibbs. I have no doubt, given his propensity for wearing buttoned shirts with the invariable sweater and bow tie, that Professor Gibbs never donned the colorful attire I created as a testament of my education under his tutelage. But, worn or not, the shirt was my own fanciful interpretation of my mentor’s rather profound influence on my ability to think about science. I believe that the seeds Dr. Gibbs planted in many of us over five decades of teaching and molding students such as myself shall grow and remain as testimony to his ability to shepherd young scientists.

Dr. Gibbs employed many approaches to the art of teaching. But most of all, he seemed to have a wellspring of experience that he could apply effortlessly to point out the errors in technical approaches, as well as in the assumptions a student makes about the implications of experimental results. My goodness, as a graduate student, I often wondered how many new ways I could find to be incorrect about an approach, assumption, or conclusion made regarding our research. Gruff and erudite at the same time, he brought me to the blackboard often to teach me a lesson about how to think about the problem at hand.

With Dr. Gibbs, those were the operative words: how to think! In the end—I mean when we pass our dissertation exam—that is really what we’ve (hopefully) accomplished: an appreciation of how to think about science. How to think, how to ask the right questions, and how to employ strategies to obtain a definitive answer to those questions.

I know that I shall be forever grateful that I had a chance to benefit from Dr. Gibbs’s mentorship in this regard. When you see me at an annual meeting, and you notice something green growing out of my cranium, know that it most certainly was planted there by this most extraordinary teacher.

Gerry Berkowitz
University of Connecticut

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When my late husband Bill Klein came into office as ASPP Executive Secretary–Treasurer, Plant Physiology was a bimonthly journal printed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When the decision was made to go to a monthly issuance, the Lancaster printers could not accommodate that scheduling. After a careful search, Craftsmen Inc., in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, was chosen. Craftsmen was a small-job printer, operated by a young man with comparatively little experience but powerful persuasive prowess. The deciding factor was the plant superintendent, Mr. John Houck, an older man with impeccable credentials and many years of experience, a highly respected local man.

The changeover was smooth, and the operation proceeded without issue. Marty, Bill, and I made the trip to Kutztown monthly to check on whatever needed attention and to confer with both the owner and the superintendent. We would pick up Marty at the train station and drive to Kutztown, where we would spend most of the day.

Although the young manager was withholding the required FICA taxes, it seems that without anyone else’s knowledge, except the bookkeeper’s, he was not sending the quarterly payments to the IRS. One Friday night, Marty had a call from Mr. Houck telling him that he expected IRS agents to step in the next day. Marty telephoned Bill, and Saturday morning we picked up Marty and rushed to Kutztown by car, arriving about 9:00 a.m. A truck from Waverly Press (Baltimore) was already there, preparing to take the galleys. (Marty had arranged for that in the interim.) The IRS agents did indeed arrive just after the Waverly truck disappeared through the streets of the town.

Winifred Klein

[Editor’s note: Printing Corporation of America, which owned both Craftsmen and Business Press, Inc., suggested that the journal operation move to Business Press in Lancaster. Marty wrote in his 1964 Editor’s Report (Plant Physiology 39:1061–1062) that “With the transfer of Plant Physiology to the Lancaster plant, the journal returns to its birth site. In fact the present plant superintendent’s father supervised the operations during the early years of Plant Physiology.”]

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Martin Gibbs must have been the first and only editor of Plant Physiology. At least that’s what I thought as a young, new member of the Society. That naive, incorrect impression came from Gibbs’s firm and confident hand as leader of a journal destined to be almost overwhelmed by its success during his tenure.

The contact Professor Gibbs and I had was almost exclusively in the context of the editorial affairs of Plant Physiology, but the memories are rich and varied. One that immediately comes to mind concerns his letters written “b.e.m.” (before e-mail). In those early days, I would occasionally write to him to inquire about some editorial matter. My long letters were invariably answered in as few as 10 or 12 words, followed by a nearly legible “Marty.” Eventually I compared the short length of those one-sentence letters with his often lengthy “state of the journal” reports at the annual meetings. Just as Gibbs could condense years of experience into a sentence for me, he was condensing a huge amount of work into what seemed to him to be a short report.

Of course, the associate editors of the journal got to see sides of his personality other members may not have seen. For me this exposure began with Marty’s desire, as the journal grew and the editorial staff got larger, to have a midwinter meeting. After one January trip to centrally located and transportationally well-connected St. Louis, home of associate editor Joe Varner, another associate—Johannes van Overbeek—balked. Too cold! Let’s meet someplace warmer—like College Station. Marty conceded, probably in unspoken recognition of van O’s long battle with Parkinson’s disease. The concession was not without cost because most of the associate editors would not brave the small commuter planes serving van O’s “city,” thus requiring a 90-mile drive from the Houston airport. During the first meeting, on a weekend between semesters, the group worked late and found themselves locked inside the library near the time Mrs. van Overbeek, a local attorney, had dinner planned for the group. A call to the campus police sprung the editors in time not to spoil dinner. At dinner I sensed that Marty was more embarrassed than van O. Nevertheless, Marty was always patient with van Overbeek and always very complimentary of his College Station hostess, perhaps in anticipation of her legal services if the group ever got locked up again.

Eventually the “midwinter” meetings were moved to Riverside, where the airport was larger. For these trips, Marty’s wife Karen often accompanied him, and he enjoyed visiting professor status during the local mini-quarter. During those visits, we managed to get locked out of a campus building one morning, thus delaying Marty’s tightly scheduled morning session.

Editor Gibbs held these meetings to ensure that all the associate editors would have the opportunity for input on all aspects of the journal. No detail was too minute to escape our attention. When the olive green stock used for the cover was to become unavailable, we discussed the choice of a replacement. Someone commented that they would be happy to see the last of the “olive drab” covers. I learned later in a private comment from Marty that he liked the old covers and was disappointed that we did not choose a color near the old one. One point of this story was that anything put before the group could be decided by the group, and I do not recall Marty overruling us.

That there were solid-color covers instead of beautiful, slick photos or micrographs reflects on another Gibbs characteristic: frugality. For a while, I thought it was frugality for the sake of frugality. Eventually I realized that Marty’s career-long battle to keep the price of the journal down had to do with making it available to subscribers for whom price or foreign exchange was a problem. Gibbs protected the Society’s treasury in all his official activities. I recall those letters, written on fourth-page stationary, typed by him on a manual typewriter. I remember his explanation of the staffing in his office and wondered how he got the monumental amount of work done with so small a staff. Despite the frugality that he practiced, Marty let the individual associate editors express our values in how we used the company treasury. There was one exception to his frugality: The editorial board dinner at the annual meeting was always a first-class event, and I never heard him cautioning anyone to try to keep the cost down. If an editorial board member’s pay was one dinner a year, he wanted it to be a memorable one. I trust they were.

The firm and confident hand that Editor Gibbs used to guide the journal’s editorial affairs was never, to my knowledge, used to override any of the associate editors’ decisions. Dr. Gibbs always trusted his associates to be scholarly and fair. This relationship of trust and respect fostered a working environment that prevented stress and tension within the group. As a result, our meetings were always pleasant and collegial, for which I give full credit to Marty.

It may come as a surprise to some, but Martin’s concern for fair play extended far beyond decisioning manuscripts. As the number of women in the Society and publishing in the journal grew, Marty urged the associate editors to increase their nominations of qualified women candidates to their panels of the editorial board. He pushed this effort, eventually by counting openly by editor the number of female members who were on each of the panels. He also led discussions of likely female board members. Gibbs soon took a similar approach to internationalization of the journal. He recognized that good manuscripts would follow appointment of good international scientists to the editorial board. He also adopted the cause of scientists in countries where science was hard to do for various reasons. He personally championed the cause of scientists in Russia. However, I never had the feeling that Marty took up any of these “causes” for any reason other than his sense of fairness.

When Marty retired, I was prompted to write him another long letter, this one personal. His faithful care for his wife Karen had been an inspiration to me. Her long, debilitating illness was certainly a burden, but I never saw him falter in his care and concern for her. She traveled with him to most, if not all, of the annual meetings and many of the midwinter meetings. He was always, in my view, patient and supportive. In response to the letter and my comments about his faithful care of Karen, he politely dismissed my expressed compliment for this revelation of character with something like “it’s the right thing to do.” That seemed consistent with the rest of his life, as I was privileged to see it.

The plant sciences and the American Society of Plant Physiologists/Biologists were influenced in a favorable way by the life and work of Martin Gibbs, scientist and editor.

Page Morgan
Emeritus Professor, Texas A&M University

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I was the first Gibbs graduate student. Dr. Gibbs (we never called him Marty) was a very concerned mentor. I suspect he was as nervous as I when I took my qualifying exam, though it never would have occurred to me at the time. He fostered independence. He convinced me to work on purine biosynthesis in plants and not on photosynthetic CO₂ fixation. I administered labeled carbon compounds to Caffea arabica leaf squares, isolated caffeine, and degraded it, carbon by carbon. I can’t remember getting much advice on setting up the experiments and any advice on which labeled compounds to administer. Amazingly, as I finished one experiment and went on to the next, the labeled compound I needed was always there, in the lab. It never occurred to me that those compounds weren’t standard and were being ordered, one by one. And only a year or two after I finished and left Cornell did I realize that if CO₂ and HCOOH had been equivalent, the Calvin cycle might have been put into doubt. As it was, I didn’t find a new path of CO₂ fixation, but I did do the first experiments indicating that the origin of the purine carbons is the same in plants and in animals.

Dr. Gibbs fostered independence out of the lab as well. When I arrived in Ithaca I had no car and no driver’s license. He must have decided that I needed a license, because one summer day he informed me that I needed to take a state car to Brookhaven to pick up some coffee plants for my research and that Ithaca College needed adults to serve as driving students for the student driving instructors in a short course. (The Brookhaven Lab is on Long Island, about six hours from Ithaca, through New York City traffic.) Ten days later, having imposed on every car-owning graduate student in the department for extra practice time behind the wheel, I passed the New York State driving exam and got my license. Then, amazingly, a couple of experienced drivers in the lab were appointed to go with me to Brookhaven to pick up those coffee plants, and I didn’t have to drive a station wagon across New York City two days after getting my first driver’s license after all. But I did have a license.

Dr. Gibbs was a superb lecturer. He gave the most interesting exams I have ever taken. We were planning a Gibbs Group Reunion in connection with the ASPB meeting in Boston this past August. It was canceled when we learned of the rapid deterioration of his health. We met at the moving memorial service instead. We will miss his stories, his repartee, and his scientific insight.

Louise E. Anderson
University of Illinois at Chicago

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In 1961, when I had recently started to work with chloroplasts (really naked thylakoids, but I didn’t know it then), I spent the summer at Brookhaven National Laboratory. I tried, and failed, to set up a rapid flow system to look for post-illumination phosphorylation. However, my summer experience was very far from a failure, because that was when I met Marty Gibbs. It was summertime, and many of us brought along brown bag lunches to eat on the lawn outside the lab. Marty was among us and had fascinating things to say about photosynthesis, about the scientists working on photosynthesis, about theories and philosophies about photosynthesis, about historical details in photosynthesis that were being ignored…. He had tremendous insight and background in the field and was happy to share it with anyone who would listen. That was an invaluable part of my education, and it allowed me to become a better teacher.

There were other good things that came from knowing Marty. He was warm, sympathetic, and humorous. It was very easy to become his good friend, and it was apparent that he had very many. He had funny stories to tell about Cornell’s Biochemistry Department and about many other human foibles. But never were his tales mean or spiteful, and he provided a wonderful role model for developing a generous outlook on the world.

Andre Jagendorf
Cornell University

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As an Australian postdoc given the chance to join Martin Gibbs’s group, I enthusiastically accepted his invitation to come to Brandeis University in 1964 from Professor Krotkov’s lab in Kingston, Ontario. I had spent an enjoyable and instructive couple of weeks the previous year at Cornell learning to disassemble glucose molecules. Friendships forged then were to continue at Brandeis. 

The first year at Brandeis, with the physical upheaval involved, was at times a bit chaotic, but when the new lab took shape we shared the Dunkin’ Donuts and Rose’s morning coffee with our mentor and his chalkboard. Martin Gibbs’s probing questions and speculations about metabolic pathways certainly helped train us to think on our feet. Yet high spirits, hilarious anecdotes and reminiscences, or baseball sometimes took over. One particular memory I have recalls a day when Boston was pretty well snowed-in. It was quiet. Most had sensibly stayed at home. As Dr. Gibbs and I sat in the window bay watching the snow in a mellow mood, there was a lengthy (and patriotic) discourse on history. I am sure that he wanted all his students to share his own personal vision of an international community of plant scientists. Martin Gibbs and his colleagues have indeed contributed a great deal to its creation.

Garth Everson
Human Research Ethics
Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital

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The date of July 24, 2006, does not make me feel good, and I guess it never will, as I will never hear from Marty again. However, being reminded of that date brings back a lot of pleasant memories of meeting Martin Gibbs and our interactions over 28 years. I first met Martin Gibbs in 1965 in Aberystwyth, Wales, at a NATO-sponsored meeting on photosynthesis. At that time I was a young assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, becoming involved in regulation of starch synthesis in plants. I still remember his encouraging words. Our contacts increased as I started to publish results in Plant Physiology and, surprisingly, he asked me to serve on the Plant Physiology editorial board from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1978 to 1980. As he wanted to emphasize more biochemistry in the journal, Marty asked me to be an associate editor from 1980 to 1992 or until he retired as editor-in-chief. These were great moments for the journal and for the American Society of Plant Physiologists. As agreed by almost all, it was the foremost journal in plant science at that time, undoubtedly due to Marty’s hard work and organizing ability. I remember at the editorial board meetings and at the Plant Physiology meetings his ability to project kindness, advice, and great encouragement to many of the younger plant scientists, as well as his great adaptability in reviewing papers that perhaps some would view as not appropriate for the journal. One example was his willingness to accept structural biology papers, and indeed during his time crystal structures of plant-related enzymes (e.g., polygalacturonase) were published. After he retired, my contact with him was much less frequent, but surely I would still get advice from him, along with comments about life and other issues. They were always appreciated. Martin is certainly missed by many.

Jack Preiss
Michigan State University

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On July 24, 2006, the community of Bulgarian plant physiologists lost one of the leading personalities, and many of us lost a good colleague and friend, Professor Martin Gibbs from the USA.

Professor Martin Gibbs was a very good friend of Bulgarian science and particularly plant physiologists. He visited Bulgaria two times as a guest of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and “Acad. Metodii Popov” Institute of Plant Physiology. In 1987, he participated in The International Symposium on Mineral Nutrition and Photosynthesis as an invited lecturer and presented on the newly discovered physiological process of chloroplast respiration.

Professor Gibbs usually manifested great concern about young scientists. He used to participate in discussions on their scientific interests and results, giving valuable advice that stimulated their scientific career development. When possible he invited some of them to take part in his workshops held at Brandeis University.

He was always helping to organize international meetings and conferences for young scientists. His name presented in the lists of organizing committees usually attracted many distinguished scientists in the field of photosynthesis.

Through Professor Gibbs, Bulgarian plant physiologists were able to establish fruitful and long-lasting collaborations with Professors Clanton Black, William Outlaw, and Peter Hommann, in whose laboratories many Bulgarian researchers were invited to work and study.

Professor Gibbs’s contribution to improving the quality of our publications was also highly appreciated. During financially hard times for Bulgarian science, when it was impossible for us to publish our otherwise good results in such a prominent journal as Plant Physiology, he always found a way to assist.

The Institute of Plant Physiology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Union of Bulgarian Scientists awarded a medal to Professor Gibbs for his special merit in the field of plant physiology.

I have always felt proud of the support I received from Professor Gibbs. His wisdom and knowledge were the criteria by which I have always verified my scientific findings. From our correspondence of many years, I learned to be strict and to aim high, but also to work with dedication and passion.

When I informed him that I had started to read lectures on photosynthesis while at the Plant Physiology Department of Sofia University, “St. Kliment Ohridski,” he asked his students to immediately send me the latest books on the topic issued in the USA. Regarding reading lectures, he always advised me to cut across the framework of textbooks and to acquaint students with the latest scientific achievements. His view was that in this way future Bulgarian researchers would be well prepared to face the challenges of modern plant physiology. When some of my students left to work abroad, he assured me that for science there were no boundaries and that our best ambassadors all over the world would be Bulgarian scientists.

Our last meeting was in June 2005 in his home. I was impressed by his clear memories of his colleagues and friends in Bulgaria. We had a lively conversation about the future of plant physiology.

I will miss Professor Gibbs very much. I’ll miss his wisdom and kindness and his great love of science. I will miss his gentle smile and aromatic pipe.

I was extremely lucky to cross scientific paths with Professor Gibbs. Professor Gibbs, I thank you for your friendship!

Losanka Popova
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

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During the 1970s, I studied and worked as a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Martin Gibbs’s laboratory in the Biology Department at Brandeis University. During my first weeks in Dr. Gibbs’s laboratory, he taught me the qualitative and quantitative methods of following the path of carbon during photosynthetic CO₂ assimilation. Using ¹⁴CO₂, he demonstrated how carbon could be traced into phosphorylated sugars, complex carbohydrates, and organic acids in leaves and chloroplasts of both C-3 and C-4 plants. I soon realized that I was most fortunate to be a research associate in his laboratory. Dr. Gibbs was a great teacher and research director, and I continue to realize that I was fortunate and greatly privileged to have been one of his students and associates.

Dr. Gibbs attracted many postdoctoral associates and graduate students who were dedicated to research in various aspects of photosynthetic plant physiology and biochemistry. Some of the postdoctoral associates who were present during my stay were Larry Labor, Grahame Kelly, Roy McGowan, Denny O’Neal, Sue Thomas (now Sue Coad), Martin Steup, Dan King, and David Erbes, all of whom have gone on to have successful careers. During the 1970s, graduate students who earned PhD degrees under Dr. Gibbs included Bernice Schacter, Carolyn Levi, John Perchorowicz, Yok Wah Kow, Dwight Peavey, Gerry Berkowitz, and Changguo Chen. All have achieved meaningful careers in various areas of academic science, teaching, or business. Those of us working in the Gibbs laboratory were assisted by and also helped direct undergraduate students in various research projects in photosynthetic biochemistry. Some of these students have gone on to become medical doctors or biochemists.

During the 1970s, there were occasional visiting plant physiologists and biochemists in the laboratory, e.g., Ralph Anderson of Utah; Erwin Latzko and Martin Steup of Germany; Mordhay Avron, Zvi Plaut, Elchanan Bamberger, Ami Ben-Amotz, and Herman Lips of Israel; and Nichiporovich and Yusef Nasyrov from research institutes in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Gibbs maintained strong friendships with plant physiologists and plant biochemists in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, France, Israel, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, China, and Japan. He was a most active scientist in establishing good relations and exchanges with many Russian plant physiologists. I always considered this a contribution to world peace and a step in eliminating the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the USA. Those of us in the laboratory enjoyed and profited by what we learned from these visiting scientists; these interactions enhanced our intellectual environment and established lifelong friendships and international connections.

Under Dr. Gibbs’s leadership and direction, each of us in the laboratory collaborated with him to make advances in research to better understand various aspects of photosynthetic carbon metabolism. Some of these advances were increased knowledge of carbon metabolism enzymes such as the reversible and irreversible glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase in the chloroplasts and cytosol of higher plants, greater understanding of the influence of early growth of corn plants in determining the development of C-3 and C-4 metabolism, improved knowledge of the role of oxygen in affecting and regulating photosynthetic carbon metabolism in both C-3 and C-4 plants, and better understanding of hydrogen evolution and metabolism and its influence on carbon metabolism in green algae.

On a daily basis, Dr. Gibbs was constantly busy, not only directing research but editing the journal Plant Physiology and lecturing in biology courses, as well as being a father of five children and a dedicated husband. His skilled leadership, unfailing dedication, and intellectual skill as the editor-in-chief of Plant Physiology led the way as it became an international premier journal in which to publish research in basic plant physiology and plant biochemistry. He advised those of us in the laboratory to constantly keep up with the literature in plant physiology and biochemistry journals. Often, our daily discussions concerned various papers in these journals, and that practice enhanced our knowledge and our experimental approaches.

Those of us who were fortunate enough to have our lives touched by Dr. Gibbs continue to remember his life, his contributions and accomplishments, and his friendship, which will always enrich us and mean so much to us.

(Author’s note: See Gibbs, Martin 1999. Educator and Editor. Annu Rev Plant Physiol and Plant Mol Biol 50: 1–25. This is Dr. Gibbs’s story in his own words. To this writer, this chapter is a wonderful memorial to Martin Gibbs, and I believe it includes his own feelings about the way he would like us to remember him.)

J. Michael Robinson
Research Plant Physiologist (retired)
USDA–ARS

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One cannot describe 50 years of friendship in just a few words. Instead, I will attempt to convey humane aspects of Dr. Gibbs through some personal observations, emphasizing his concern for the individual and persistence of interest in that person that lasted a lifetime.

I went from Haverford College to Cornell University in the summer of 1956, hoping to study plant biochemistry under Professor Martin Gibbs. However, the transition from a small college to a huge university was overwhelming to me, and I took medical leave in the spring of 1957 to return home to Tokyo. Even during this first brief year, Dr. Gibbs knew how to guide this nervous, unconfident freshman graduate student. For my first departmental journal club presentation, he suggested a 1954 paper by Borthwick et al., the first description of photo-reversibility of a plant pigment affecting lettuce seed germination. It was a seminal paper, on the cutting-edge subject of phytochrome, and hence there were very few background papers to read. To this day I do not recall what I said on the podium, but I do remember that the presentation was well received.

Three years later, in Tokyo, I married Fumiko Tomoyama and planned to return to Cornell with her. I gave up plans for a career as a research scientist and hoped for training to become a high school science teacher. I then received a kind and surprising letter from Dr. Gibbs, inviting me to return to his laboratory as a graduate student. This letter of encouragement, expressing confidence in me, decided my subsequent career for good. I returned to Cornell with my wife, and Dr. Gibbs became my lifelong mentor. Once Martin Gibbs knew you, he did not give up on you easily.

Dr. Gibbs was a strict but patient teacher. Once I was to prepare potato phosphatase for the whole lab, following Kornberg’s recipe. I peeled a large number of potatoes and put them in a garbage can filled with water, to be used for a massive preparation next day. Well, the final product showed zero activity, and I learned the meaning of enzyme fragility the hard way. Dr. Gibbs watched this whole operation with a straight face and let me learn by my own experience.

To “go the extra mile” is the expression used for effort above and beyond the expectation. Dr. Gibbs went those extra miles on our behalf many times, and sometimes literally. He spent the summer of 1963 at the Department of Plant Biology at Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. My aunt, a medical doctor in San Francisco, offered to put her Ford at his disposal during his stay, and in return asked him to deliver the car to her nephew on his way back to Ithaca. He agreed and drove that 1955 Ford to Ithaca in the fall of 1963. Years later, I often wondered if I would make a similar effort for my own student.

Later I witnessed the effort he made in promoting international collaboration, again going that extra mile. Dr. Gibbs, together with Shigetoh Miyachi of Tokyo University, was co-organizer of the U.S.–Japan Cooperative Seminar on Photosynthetic Carbon Flow, held at Lake Arrowhead, California, in 1984. The seminar successfully brought together many active researchers from both countries for the first time, initiating much new collaboration. Dr. Gibbs’s behind-the-scenes effort during the preparation for this seminar resulted in the inclusion of a woman scientist, Yukiko Sasaki, in the Japanese delegation. In 2004, she received a Corresponding Membership Award from ASPB.

Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs were also kind advisers to Fumiko and me from our graduate student period onward. Dr. Gibbs’s legendary devotion to his family has affected us deeply. He was a great mentor and above all a strong role model. He made the difference to so many people, and so often. Can we emulate this even fractionally? Probably not. But he has motivated us to give it a good try and to keep the legacy going. Thank you, Dr. Gibbs, for showing us what a difference one person can make.

Robert K. Togasaki
Professor Emeritus, Indiana University

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We two, Erwin Latzko and Grahame Kelly (EL and GK), remember Martin Gibbs as being a central personality within our professional and personal lives. EL first experienced a lively research visit in Marty’s lab in 1965. It was fascinating to work with scientists from five other countries, and that time was so successful that he returned again in 1970. That was when he met GK, a newly arrived postdoc from Australia. For EL and GK, and for so many other graduate students, postdocs, and researchers who passed through his lab, Marty’s big heart, lively character, and sinister ability to ask questions rather than offer answers in science kept us connected to him and to each other in spirit long after departing his lab.

Marty made many short reciprocal visits to EL’s lab in Germany, first in Freising-Weihenstephan, then later in Münster. While in Münster in 1978, he was delighted to be honored with an Alexander von Humboldt Award. He would usually come in the spring, often with his lovely wife Karen. Marty would bring a fresh live lobster or two packed in ice eight hours earlier at the Boston airport. It would be put to sleep in warm water and cooked, and soon a lobster and Bavarian beer feast was on the table, and no one enjoyed it more than Marty. His great sense of humor and ability to relate vivid tales came to the fore on such occasions. Those were some of the jolliest days of our lives and a time when the Gibbs and Latzko families became very close. Those family bonds lasted for over 40 years.

Inasmuch as GK spent the years 1974–1979 in EL’s lab, he was lucky enough to join in on the work and adventures during Marty’s visits. On one occasion Marty grilled GK over his input to the first draft of a “Gibbs and Latzko” review destined for the Annual Review of Plant Physiology. GK was internally upset over the constant cross-examination by Marty and was tempted to comment “this is your review; you fix it!” However, he kept his mouth shut. Then Marty declared, “Well, you have been a great help, young man. I think you should be included, as first author.” Was that not magnificent training of a young scientist, both in profession and in patience? The review was published and nine years later became a citation classic (Current Contents [1985] 16(15):20).

On other occasions, brief journeys were made to centers of plant physiology research in various European cities, both east and west. Apart from being annoyed at breakfast when GK tuned in to the short-wave Radio Australia news, which started with a kooka-burra laugh (Marty complained “Can’t you keep down the volume of that goddamn Australian jackass?!”), Marty thoroughly enjoyed those journeys. Visits were made to Roland Douce in Grenoble, Zdenek Šesták (editor of Photosynthetica) in Prague, and Agnes Faludi- Daniel in Szeged (the frog’s legs meal in Szeged has never been forgotten). These were three of what must have been dozens of visits that were part of his lifelong devotion to personally fostering connections between plant physiologists worldwide, regardless of politics.

GK returned to Australia in 1980. Marty’s visits to EL in Germany continued until 2003. We three never lost touch. Christmas cards were faithfully exchanged every year. On the occasion of Marty’s 65th birthday, “Happy Birthday to You” was sung to him by GK’s daughters over the telephone from Tasmania. Like thousands of other life experiences, he treasured that. He recalled it when GK, who had not seen Marty since 1989, enjoyed lunch with him and Karen at Jimmy’s Steakhouse (Boston) on August 30, 2005.

We feel very sad that Martin and his beloved Karen are now gone. Nevertheless, we are also grateful for the many Marty-memories we have to reflect upon in the years ahead.

Grahame Kelly
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Erwin Latzko
Professor Emeritus
Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany

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In 1954, Martin Gibbs was invited by Professor Alexis Moyse to attend the International Congress that he had organized in Paris. It was the first time the two scientists met, leading to a constant scientific relationship and an enduring personal friendship that got Martin elected into the French Academy of Sciences and a conference report, coauthored with me, published in the Compte Rendu. At the occasion of the Botanical Congress in Montreal, Martin invited Professor Moyse and his French colleagues to join other “photosynthesis people” to a friendly dinner at his home. A few years later, after we had discussed scientific problems at the Photosynthesis Congress in Edinburg, Martin invited me to come and work in his laboratory in Waltham. I appreciated his fairness and great knowledge of plant biochemistry.

A very individual aspect of Martin Gibbs’s personality was his love for France. He took great pleasure in touring, visiting small places and the countryside. The last visit he made was Normandy and the WWII landing beaches. Besides the historical and sentimental interest (he stepped silently onto the beach on which his brother Sol had landed in 1944), he appreciated the little hotel at Bayeux and another one at Sceaux. He was looking forward to another tour in Brittany, which I had all prepared, but decided not to do it because of his wife Karen’s sickness.

Martin Gibbs was a great-hearted man. He showed his gratitude to me by inviting me to Lexington or especially to Woods Hole as often as we had the opportunity to meet. There I felt at home.

We have lost a good, caring friend.

M. L. Champigny
CNRS

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Marty was a dear friend. I was surprised and much saddened by the news on July 24 from his granddaughter, Leila Kocen, informing her grandfather’s many e-mail friends of his passing. I still remember vividly the countless ASPP meetings when Marty laboriously wheeled his wife Karen in and out of many social functions. He even drove Karen up 6,800 feet to our Big Bear Mountain home outside Los Angeles. Those were the days when they spent their enjoyable winter months on the campus of the University of California, Riverside, mingling with undergrads and attending and organizing several January plant science meetings.

I first met Marty long ago, in the mid-1960s, when he arrived by car to the outskirts of Chicago at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He had come from Cornell for research collaboration with my postdoctoral mentor, Solon Gordon, using ANL’s giant walk-in spectrograph. He brought with him his student, Clanton Black, and a postdoc from Australia. Marty left his students behind and instructed them to return to Cornell by way of Canada (so that they could pick up for him a long list of liquor supplies). Clanton and his colleague, time and again, had to make calls to Cornell for detailed clarification.

Marty never served as president of ASPP, but his tenure of three decades as editor-in-chief of Plant Physiology was legendary. He certainly knew how to give parties for his editorial board during each annual meeting. What a wonderful tradition! We were treated to classy meals including after-dinner drinks and cigars (the latter of which I never tried). In his dinner invitations he would ask each member to list the name of the “wife” whom each wished to bring. Being not blessed with one, I wrote “what about a husband?” During one dinner Marty proclaimed, “I’ve made an exception; Jane can bring her husband.” Though I never brought my husband, I invited my former biochemistry professor Dr. Richard Byerrum (elected executive director of ASPP) to many a fine dining.

I saw Marty more frequently in Washington, DC, when he visited the Metabolic Biology Program at NSF, which he served as a wise panel member for many years. His association with our common friend, academician A. A. Krasnovsky, presidium of the A. N. Bach Institute of Biochemistry, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, led to long-lasting discussions on bacterial photosynthesis and conferences. He was so very pleased, in later years, to have a Russian friend in his home to care for Karen. Marty was a wonderful human being, civilized, cultured, and jovial, always full of laughter. He is sorrowfully missed.

J. Shen-Miller
University of California

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I am proud to share with Professor Martin Gibbs the title of “DINOSAUR.” This was the title bestowed upon us by Alex Hollander as he introduced us to an audience of molecular biologists. We were the generation that took over from Folke Skoog, Kenneth Thimann, J. van Overbeek, and many others who had studied the phenomenology of growth and photosynthesis. It was our turn then to use enzymology and radioisotopes to create the metabolic map that now graces the display cases of laboratories. By 1980 we were, in fact, DINOSAURS, as science had shifted to molecular biology and the cloning of the genes that guided the synthesis of the enzymes of glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and photosynthesis. How quick the passage of time and how quick the changes in the methodology of science. We stood on the shoulders of others and, in turn, others stand on our shoulders.

Robert S. Bandurski
Doctorus Honorus, Michigan State University

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