I consider myself extremely lucky to have the opportunity to acquire such a great mentor and good friend. However, collaborating with him is not always easy. selleckchem He has high working standards, and is very demanding regarding the correctness and precision of all scientific ideas and language. Especially regarding the English language, Govindjee is very demanding, and as have many of his former foreign students and selleck screening library collaborators, I received from him the little book The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, and I am often reminded to perfect my English. In all this time, I have not met with him in person, our communication being limited to e-mails or phone calls. However,

now, after 15 years, I finally met him during the 16th International Photosynthesis Congress in St. Louis. It was a fruitful although brief meeting. Colin Wraight Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Plant Biology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Cilengitide nmr Govindjee was already well known to me before I arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1975. He was not only well-respected for his extensive and seminal work on

the Emerson enhancement effect and on chlorophyll fluorescence, but he was also a warm and immensely likeable “character”, who was totally approachable by anyone interested in photosynthesis—a trait that has not diminished over the years. As a graduate student I was lucky enough to attend the first international photosynthesis congress, in Freudenstadt, in 1967, where Govindjee announced that he was taking Triton X as his first name. When I came to Illinois, my lab was next door to Govindjee’s, and was so for many years.

The mentoring I received from my department was outstanding, but none more so than Govindjee’s. Gov went out of his way to ensure that anything in his lab was available to me, if needed, and he constantly engaged me in discussions and analyses of his lab’s work, as well as encouraging collaborations. The latter I largely eschewed, knowing that establishing my independence was essential to my career development, but I did work on one very enjoyable project with Gov’s graduate student, Paul Jursinic. All through my career, Gov has been a wonderful mentor, colleague and friend, and I can’t really imagine how things might have Dichloromethane dehalogenase been without his constant and nurturing presence. Even today, he continues to pay deep and meaningful attention to the well being of all his colleagues. My wife, Mary, and I consider ourselves very lucky to know Govindjee and his wife, Rajni, and to be among their friends. [I would like to mention the outstanding papers Wraight and Govindjee have published together: Jursinic et al. (1978), Shopes et al. (1989), Wang et al. (1992), and Shinkarev et al. (1997)… JJE-R.] Concluding remarks Following these wonderful tributes it still remains to congratulate Govindjee on the many other honors he has received over the years.