IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON / CHERYL APSEEMolecular biologist and founding president of the European Research Council (ERC), Fotis Kafatos, has died at age 77 in Heraklion, Crete. The researcher, who was well known for his work on the malaria-spreading mosquito Anopheles gambiae, had been battling a long illness, according to the Associated Press.
Born in 1940 in Crete, Kafatos grew up with diverse interests. “I spent every Sunday morning, when I was a kid, at the archeological museum in [Heraklion],” he said in an interview with The Scientist in 2003. “I also had ambitions of being a poet. I like literature.”
Following a PhD in Biology at Harvard University in 1965, Kafatos joined the Harvard faculty, where he helped develop cDNA cloning—the synthesis of double-stranded DNA molecules from mRNA transcripts. He remained at Harvard until 1994, and also held a part-time position at the University of Crete from 1982. From 1993 to 2005, Kafatos headed the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), an international and interdisciplinary consortium based in Heidelberg, Germany, that promotes basic research in the life sciences.
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