The untimely death of Professor Murray Goodman of the University of California, San Diego on June 1, 2004 after a short but severe illness was a great shock and left a gaping hole in Peptide Science and in Chemistry. Murray was one of the founders and leading lights in modern peptide chemistry. His scientific work covered the full range of peptide science from the synthetic and mechanistic aspects of peptide and peptidomimetic synthesis, to structural and conformational methods, to structure-biological activity relationships, to computational chemistry and biophysical studies. All were integral parts of Murray's view of peptide science, and of its central role in modern chemistry and biology. His many seminal contributions to peptide science and to nurturing young (and older) peptide scientists worldwide are a lasting legacy. It is a great honor and privilege to dedicate this and the next issue of The Journal of Peptide Research to the memory of Murray Goodman. My sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to these issues. I am sure that Murray's family, and his many friends and colleagues, will be very pleased.
Murray's career has been long and distinguished. He received his B.S. from Brooklyn College and went west for his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, working with Nobel Laureate Melvin Calvin. He then did his postdoctoral work at MIT in Boston and at Cambridge University in England, before beginning his independent academic career at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1956. In 1964, he became a Full Professor there, and in 1967 the Director of the Polymer Research Institute. The lure of the west and the excellence of the University of California, San Diego drew him there in 1970 as a Professor of Chemistry where he remained throughout the rest of his career, serving as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry from 1978 to 1982 and as Acting Provost at Revelle College from 1972 to 1974. He was revered as an outstanding teacher and mentor. About 80 young scientists received their Ph.D. under Murray's guidance and he also mentored more than 200 postdoctoral fellows. Many of these students and associates have since gone on to outstanding careers of their own in academia and industry. For his excellence in these areas, Murray received the UCSD Chancellor's Associates Recognition Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, and very recently the endowment of the Goodman Chair in Chemistry at UCSD...
