Hugh Dunbar Robertson (1943–2005)

With the sudden death of Hugh Robertson in August, the career of one of the most devoted RNA researchers came to an untimely end. Hugh’s scientific life was firmly rooted in the world of RNA, just as choral music was a dominant theme in his personal life. Over a span of more than three decades on the faculty of the Rockefeller University and Cornell Medical School in New York, he studied many kinds of RNA, particularly viral but sometimes cellular, and his forte was those having interesting structures.

Hugh’s first major discovery was of the enzyme RNase III, specific for double-stranded RNA and similar structural elements in more complex RNA molecules. This bacterial enzyme has become the founding member of a broad family of proteins containing the dsRNA-binding motif and, famously, of a class of nucleases including Dicer, that are central to the RNA interference phenomenon of plants and animals. …