Ira G. Wool (1925–2012)

The ribosome field became a less stimulating and much less fun place to be with the loss of Ira Wool on October 23, 2012, from metastatic melanoma, at the age of 87. His rich life spanned science, medicine, the arts and more. After graduating magna cum laude from Syracuse (1949), Ira earned his MD with honors (1953) and PhD (1954) from the University of Chicago, followed by an internship at Beth Israel Hospital-Harvard Medical School. He returned to Chicago in 1956 as a Commonwealth Fellow in Medicine and became an assistant professor of physiology in 1957. He was promoted to associate professor in 1962, professor of biochemistry in 1965, and named the A.J. Carlson Professor in 1973. During his half-century-long career, Ira received many honors, including the Federal Republic of Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship in 1973–1975, the Pierce Immunotoxin Award in recognition of his major contribution to the understanding of immunotoxin function and design in 1992, and a distinguished service award from the University of Chicago Alumni Association in 2003.

Ira's early interests in the mode of action of insulin eventually led him to his pioneering studies of the eukaryotic ribosome. He made numerous basic contributions to the understanding of its structure and function among his more than 260 published papers. His discovery with postdoc Axel Gressner of ribosomal protein S6 phosphorylation during liver regeneration (Gressner and Wool 1974) gave birth to an entire field that now studies the mTOR pathway, which plays one of the most fundamental and central regulatory roles in eukaryotic cells, spanning areas of biology from long-term memory to tumorigenesis. Ira made a seminal contribution to our understanding of the functional importance of ribosomal RNA with the remarkable discovery with Yaeta Endo, working in his lab in the early 1980s, that the killing of cells by the endotoxins α-sarcin and ricin is caused by cleavage of a single bond in 28S ribosomal RNA (Endo and Wool 1982). The universally conserved target site, now known as the sarcin-ricin loop, turned out to be the binding site for the GTPase translation factors, including EF-Tu (EF1α), EF-G (EF2), IF2, and RF3. Ira's fearlessness was underscored by the grand scale of his attack on the mammalian ribosome. Together with his long-time research associate, Yuen-Ling Chan, Ira undertook the daunting task of isolation, purification, and amino acid sequencing of all of the more than 70 ribosomal proteins and the 6000-plus nucleotides of the four eukaryotic ribosomal RNAs, an effort spanning more than two decades (Wool et al. 1996).

At scientific meetings, Ira's talks were distinctive. He prepared them with great care, writing down every word in advance. They were packed with elegant turns of phrase and delivered with dramatic flair. Not surprisingly, Ira was greatly admired by his University of Chicago medical students for his lectures, in which he wrapped the potentially dull details of human physiology in stories that carried the excitement and suspense of a gripping spy novel. He was a gifted mentor to his many students and postdocs and a fiercely loyal supporter of their careers.

Outside of his academic accomplishments, Ira led a remarkable life, one that might well have served as the model for a Hemingway novel. He grew up in Newark, NJ, where he was an avid amateur boxer, and won a football scholarship to Syracuse University, where he played halfback. During World War II, he served as a demolition specialist in Europe with the legendary 82nd Airborne. Ira had wide interests, a genuine appreciation for what was interesting to others, and a vivid sense of humor marked by his uninhibited and characteristic laugh. He was an authentic renaissance man and bon vivant, a lover of fine food and wine whose circle of friends included celebrity chefs, and, above all, a connoisseur of the arts. Over the years, he assembled an extensive collection of contemporary art, most notably the work of his long-time friend, the Swiss artist Dieter Roth. Among Ira's written works are significant contributions to books and catalogs of art.

Ira is survived by his wife, Barbara Mirecki; his two sons, Christopher, himself an internationally acclaimed artist, and Jon, a lawyer; and his brother Sheldon. Ira will be greatly missed by his scientific colleagues and his many other friends.