Remembering Tom Wydrzynski (1947–2018), one who had the guts to go after what he wanted and excelled at it

Abstract

We pay tribute to Tom Wydrzynski who passed away at age 71 on March 16, 2018, in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was a wonderful and caring human being, friend to many, and one of the great plant biologists/biochemists/biophysicists of our time. He successfully dug deeply into the function of the oxygen evolving complex (OEC) by applying a combination of novel biophysical and biochemical techniques to understand how plants produce oxygen from water. He then used this information to venture into artificial photosynthesis, a futuristic goal. In addition, Tom was the first to show that bicarbonate ions have a unique role to play on the electron accepter side of Photosystem II, water-plastoquinone oxido-reductase. This tribute draws heavily from the text that one of us (Govindjee) wrote in 2008 [1] and the unpublished text he read on behalf of many of Tom’s friends on April 7, 2018, at a memorial service in St. Louis in celebration of Tom’s life. This tribute is focused on Tom’s time and work in Urbana, Illinois, but mentions other research as well. It ends with a fitting tribute, a poem written by one of Tom’s contemporaries in Urbana, Ralph Schooley. Keywords: Artificial photosynthesis, Bicarbonate, Manganese, NMR, Oxygen evolution