obituary
Journal of
Synchrotron
Radiation
Roger Fourme (1942–2012)
ISSN 0909-0495
Figure 1
Roger Fourme.
We announce with great sadness the untimely death of Roger Fourme, who played an
important role in the advancement of synchrotron radiation research and was one of the
founding co-editors of the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation.
Roger Fourme first enrolled into a curriculum for training school teachers, but his
professors soon convinced him to switch to university studies in physics. After he
obtained his PhD in this discipline, he became Assistant Professor at the University of
Créteil near Paris, then Full Professor at the Université Paris XI, Orsay, in the late 1970s.
There he joined the LURE synchrotron, which he soon placed in a prominent position on
the international map of macromolecular crystallography and where he later acted as
Head of the Biology Department. In the late 1990s he became an enthusiastic advocate of
the construction of the French third-generation synchrotron, SOLEIL. He was one of its
Science Directors until he retired in 2007, after which he continued working at SOLEIL
as an Emeritus Professor. Roger has published extensively in the IUCr journals, including
Acta Crystallographica (pre-1970), Acta Crystallographica Section B and Section D,
Journal of Applied Crystallography and Journal of Synchrotron Radiation. He was a
founding co-editor of the latter, reflecting his extensive reach into the field of synchrotron
crystallography for life sciences in Europe.
Roger did not believe in grabbing the limelight for himself, but was tireless in pursuing
avant-garde developments that could benefit the whole field as much as possible. Many
who crossed paths or worked with him over the years recalled this after we learned of his
untimely death on Christmas Eve at the age of 71, while he was skiing with his sons and
grandchildren. Gérard Bricogne, for instance, says ‘‘it was Roger’s unique enthusiasm, his
radiant optimism, and his faith in how much could be achieved by simply pulling one’s
own sleeves up, that convinced me to take up a staff position within the French CNRS at
the LURE synchrotron, which led to my long-term collaboration with him’’.
Roger’s scientific contributions are concentrated in the area of experimental phase
determination by means of anomalous scattering, in which his name is inseparable from
that of his friend Richard Kahn who also died prematurely in the very recent past. Roger
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had an acute sense of the importance of establishing ties
between people, which led to many collaborative projects in
the development of innovative methods and instrumentation.
This is exemplified by his joint exploration with George
Charpak (long before Charpak won the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1992) of the potential of spherical-drift multiwire
chambers as detectors for macromolecular crystallography
data collection. The first version of this detector became
available at LURE in 1980 (Mark I, known to many as
Penelope), equipped with a computer interface that allowed
macromolecular crystallography data collection with a tunable
synchrotron beam. This enabled Roger and Richard to collect
what is arguably the first MAD dataset ever on an unknown
protein, namely a terbium derivative of a parvalbumin from
Opsanus tau. The crash of a PDP cartridge unfortunately led
to the loss of the primary images, and the structural results had
to be derived from the reduced data as produced by the
software current at that time, so that the final publication of
this work in 1985 failed to do justice to its pioneering aspects
[FEBS Lett. (1985). 179, 133–137]. By that time the commissioning of the much improved Mark II Charpak detector had
been completed, and the challenge of providing it with software that could realise the full potential of that masterpiece
of instrumentation led Gérard Bricogne to organize the
European Economic Community (EEC) Collaborative
Workshop on Position-Sensitive Detector Software from 1986
to 1989. This ‘EEC MADNES’ programme was pivotal in
enabling this unique instrument to deliver MAD data of
outstanding quality, as was demonstrated when LURE hosted
Wayne Hendrickson and Bill Weis in 1991. They carried out a
four-wavelength MAD experiment at the Ho edge on crystals
of a mannose-binding protein, and obtained experimental
phases of extraordinary precision [Science (1991). 254, 1608–
1615]. This seminal work demonstrated that traditional heavyatom complexes could be generally amenable to the MAD
phasing method. At about the same time, Roger and Jack
Johnson beat the resolution record for a virus crystal with a
lattice dimension exceeding 1000 Å, further expanding the
scope of synchrotron radiation [J. Appl. Cryst. (1984). 17, 147–
153]. Roger also demonstrated that the noble gas xenon could
be used for phase determination in protein structures [J. Appl.
Cryst. (1994). 27, 950–960]. The method soon found itself in
the limelight through its decisive role in the determination of
the first structure of the ligand-binding domain of a nuclear
receptor [Nature (1995). 375, 377–382]. Roger recently
recalled that Richard and he had successfully implemented a
set-up for cryogenic cooling as early as 1975, although this
remained unpublished.
Roger Fourme, working with John Helliwell, also played a
central role in the definition of the instruments bid for
macromolecular crystallography at the ESRF. Their report
[ESRP Report (1983). IRI-4/83, 1–36] formed the basis of
instrument development for these activities at the ESRF. For
the multiwavelength anomalous dispersion instrument Roger
and John opted for an ESRF bending magnet. Two other
instruments were bid for in the initial instruments suite on
ESRF: a multipole wiggler for monochromatic and white
J. Synchrotron Rad. (2013). 20, 390–392
beam (time-resolved) work and an undulator notably for virus
crystallography data collection. Microcrystal crystallography
was proposed as a high-priority development, based on an
X-ray undulator. These proposals were incorporated into the
ESRF ‘Red Book’.
Roger’s tendency to be self-effacing about his own
achievements was not a sign of timidity: he could be an equally
tireless and formidably persistent campaigner when he felt
that he was defending the scientific community. These two
sides of his personality worked together to remarkable effect
in the well known ‘Affaire du Synchrotron’ in 1999–2000,
when Roger undertook to fight a ministerial decision to cancel
the previously fully approved and funded construction of the
SOLEIL synchrotron. A key element in the success of this
campaign was an open letter sent to Le Monde by Max Perutz
who powerfully argued in favour of the SOLEIL project,
following which a review process was set up that eventually led
to the reinstatement of the SOLEIL project. Max Perutz’s
willingness to defend SOLEIL came in no small measure from
his appreciation of Roger’s deep and selfless commitment to
the development of synchrotron radiation as a resource for
macromolecular crystallography. This appreciation went back
to an episode, some 20 years earlier, recounted by Max Perutz
in his autobiographical book Science Is Not A Quiet Life, in
which Roger had shown up at 3 a.m. during a visit to LURE by
him and his post-doc Boaz Shaanan, just to make sure that
everything was running well for their high-resolution data
collection on deoxy-haemoglobin. This spontaneous act of
support, going well beyond the call of duty, amplified through
Max Perutz’s gratitude and combined with Roger’s own
tenacious efforts within the campaign for SOLEIL, played a
decisive role in enabling a new generation of multi-disciplinary synchrotron radiation research to take place in France.
Figure 2
Roger Fourme facing up a Chinese menu during the IUCr Conference on
Advanced Crystallography at High Pressure, 2009, Harbin, China.
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Roger Fourme led the organization for the International
Symposium for Diffraction Structural Biology (ISDSB) held
in 2010 at the Université Paris Sud, and the location of the
original French synchrotron facility LURE. ISDSB 2010 was
the third such event. This was the first time though that the
ISDSB was held outside Japan and also which newly added the
electron and X-ray imaging tomography fields to the ISDSB
subjects’ range. The ISDSB conference series originated in
Japan with the initiative led by the 169th committee of the
University–Industry Cooperative Research Committee of the
Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The
Paris 2010 event hosted by Roger has succeeded to give the
ISDSB conference series worldwide popularity by the success
of his organization.
Roger’s subsequent scientific interests moved on towards
macromolecular crystallography under high pressures and
towards exploring the potential of ultra-short-wavelength
X-rays in producing higher-quality diffraction measurements
[J. Appl. Cryst. (2012). 45, 652–661]. It is a testimony to the
visionary approaches of Roger that his recent work on the use
of high-pressure crystallography to explore the conformational states of proteins made use of a diamond-anvil highpressure cell which he first described in his PhD thesis article
[J. Appl. Cryst. (1968). 1, 23–30], in which single crystals were
maintained under high pressure (1–30000 bar) at adjustable
temperature (293–493 K).
Roger knew how to transmit the sense of the freedom that
can be enjoyed if one does science for the pleasure of seeing it
progress through the work of a whole community, rather than
nervously watching one’s own list of personal publications in
high-impact journals. His friend in politics, François Périnet,
recalls that when he asked Roger what research needed in
order to thrive, Roger used to answer ‘freedom, serenity and
time’. Roger never forgot that his family was from a modest
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background, and this is probably why he tirelessly worked
towards the dissemination of knowledge and education to the
majority of the population rather than to a privileged élite.
This was reflected in his strong political commitment towards
education for peace in the world, for which he travelled the
planet with his wife Josette. He will be remembered as a man
of outstanding talent, generosity, tolerance and passionate
convictions.
Jacqueline Cherfils
Laboratoire d’Enzymologie et Biochimie Structurales, CNRS,
Gif-sur-Yvette, France – French Association of Crystallography
Thierry Prangé
Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France
John R. Helliwell
School of Chemistry, University of Manchester, Manchester
M13 9PL, UK
Nori Sakabe
Photon Factory, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
(KEK), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan
Michèle Sauvage
Synchrotron Soleil, Saint Aubin, 91192 Gif sur Yvette, France
J. Friso van der Veen
Paul Scherrer Institut, CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
SOLEIL Directorate and Editorial Board
J. Synchrotron Rad. (2013). 20, 390–392