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We are deeply saddened by the passing of Robert (Bob) Linhardt, well known to all of us for his amazing contributions to the fields of proteoglycan research, heparin and glycobiology. Bob was Professor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. Bob was an incredibly productive scientist having authored ~1500 scientific papers and reviews, encompassing 87,000 citations and an astronomical h-index of 142 and i10 index of 1033. Just in 2024, Bob was coauthor of 28 scientific contributions to our research field. (Figure 1)
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Education and Appointments. Bob was born in 1953 in Passaic, NJ, and was 71 years old. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Marquette University in Wisconsin (1975) and then an MS and a PhD in Physical Organic Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (1979). His graduate studies gave him a strong background in chemical analysis, synthesis and mechanistic chemistry. He then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge to conduct postdoctoral studies with Robert Langer focusing on drug delivery and removal systems. The Mentor/Mentee relationship with Bob Langer was a very important part of Bob's future career and discoveries. On leaving MIT in 1982, Bob joined University of Iowa where he spent the next 21 years rising through the ranks to become a Chaired Professor in the Departments of Medicinal and Natural Products Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. In 2003, Bob moved to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, as Ann and John H. Broadbent Senior Constellation Chair in Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Biology, Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. He expanded his research on heparin–protein interactions as they related to the heparan sulfate family's plethora of biological functions in coagulation, matrix organization, signaling, and proliferation. His research generated new insights and tremendous impact in a wide range of areas including developmental biology, drug discovery, tissue engineering, infectious diseases, and cancer.
Contributions to science. The scientific output of the Linhardt laboratory is quite astonishing. Bob was a world leader in the field of glycan analysis and sequencing, particularly in mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, hyphenated techniques, glycan purification and fractionation, and the measurement of glycan-protein interactions. Dr. Linhardt was the first person...