Fotis Kafatos

Fotis Constantine Kafatos (Greek: Φώτης Κ. Καφάτος; 16 April 1940 – 18 November 2017) was a Greek biologist.[5][6][7][8][9][10] Between 2007-2010 he was the founding president of the European Research Council (ERC).[11][12] He chaired the ERC Scientific Council from 2006-2010. Thereafter, he was appointed Honorary President of the ERC.[13][14]

Fotis Kafatos

FRS
Fotis Kafatos in 2008
Born
Φώτης Κωνσταντίνος Καφάτος
Fotis Constantine Kafatos

(1940-04-16)16 April 1940[1]
Heraklion, Crete, Greece[2]
Died18 November 2017(2017-11-18) (aged 77)
Heraklion, Crete, Greece[1]
Alma materCornell University (BS)
Harvard University (PhD)
Awards
Scientific career
InstitutionsImperial College London
European Research Council
Cornell University
Harvard University
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
University of Crete
Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas
ThesisThe escape of moths from the cocoon: biochemical, physiological, morphological, and developmental studies (1965)
Doctoral advisorCarroll Williams[4]
Other academic advisorsThomas Eisner
Websiteopenwetware.org/wiki/Kafatos:Fotis_C._Kafatos

Education

Fotis Kafatos graduated from the Lyceum Korais in Heraklion in 1958 and from Cornell University in 1961, where he was mentored by Thomas Eisner and assisted by the Fulbright Program and a scholarship from Anne Gruner Schlumberger. He earned his PhD at Harvard in 1965 for research on entomology, supervised by Carroll Williams.[4]

Research and career

Fotis Kafatos was an influential Greek biologist, having had a pivotal role in triggering the interest of the Greek government for Science, with the establishment of the Faculty of Biology in the University of Athens, the Faculty of Biology in the University of Crete and the IMBB in Heraklion.[2]

At the beginning of his career, he contributed to the development of the complementary DNA (cDNA) cloning technology and worked on the mechanisms of cellular differentiation leading to the formation of the eggs in insects.[15][16] He has particular interest in malaria research and used his knowledge of the genetics and molecular biology of insects to understand how the insect vector copes with the Plasmodium parasite. He also participated in the sequencing of the genome of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae completed in 2002.[17][18]

He was Assistant Professor and later Professor and Chairman of the department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of Harvard University, Professor of Biology at the University of Athens and at the University of Crete, director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB)[19][2] of the Foundation for Research & Technology – Hellas in Heraklion and third Director-General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory from 1993 to 2005.[20][21][22] From 2005 till his death, he had been a professor at Imperial College in London.[23] In 2007, he was appointed as the first President of the European Research Council.[24]

Awards and honours

Kafatos was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 1982 and of the American Academy. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society[25] (ForMemRS) in 2003 and was also a member of the French Académie des Sciences, the Pontifical Academy and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).[3] He was awarded the Louis-Jeantet 25th anniversary prize in 2008, the Robert Koch Medal in Gold in 2010, the BioMalPar.EviPalaR Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and the Leibnitz Medal in 2011. He was also a recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the Greek Order of the Phoenix, as well as other awards and honorary degrees in Greece and elsewhere.

Personal life

Fotis Kafatos was the son of Constantine and Helen Kafatos, had two brothers named Antonis and Menas, and lived until age 18 with his family in Heraklion, Crete, Greece. He married Sarah Niles in 1967 and they had two daughters, Helen and Zoe Myrto, and four grandchildren.

References
  1. "Έφυγε από τη ζωή ο κορυφαίος Κρητικός βιολόγος Φ. Καφάτος - Νέα Κρήτη". www.neakriti.gr. 18 November 2017.
  2. Anon (2017). "Obituary Fotis Kafatos: 16th April 1940 – 18th November 2017" (PDF). imbb.forth.gr. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 November 2017.
  3. Anon (2017). "Fotis C. Kafatos". people.embo.org. European Molecular Biology Organization.
  4. Kafatos, Fotis (1965). The escape of moths from the cocoon: biochemical, physiological, morphological, and developmental studies. harvard.edu (PhD thesis). Harvard University. OCLC 16689507.
  5. Kafatos, Fotis (2008). "Straight talk with...Fotis Kafatos". Nature Medicine. 14 (9): 902–903. doi:10.1038/nm0908-902. PMID 18776875. S2CID 21218047.
  6. Efstratiadis, A.; Kafatos, F. C.; Maxam, A. M.; Maniatis, T. (1976). "Enzymatic in vitro synthesis of globin genes". Cell. 7 (2): 279–288. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(76)90027-1. PMID 60178. S2CID 41899832.
  7. Jones, C. W.; Rosenthal, N.; Rodakis, G. C.; Kafatos, F. C. (1979). "Evolution of two major chorion multigene families as inferred from cloned cDNA and protein sequences". Cell. 18 (4): 1317–1332. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(79)90242-3. PMID 519771.
  8. Dimopoulos, G.; Müller, H. M.; Kafatos, F. C. (1999). "How does Anopheles gambiae kill malaria parasites?". Parassitologia. 41 (1–3): 169–175. PMID 10697851.
  9. Kafatos, Fotis (2005). "Chairman explains Europe's research council". Nature. 438 (7069): 723. Bibcode:2005Natur.438..723.. doi:10.1038/438723a. PMID 16340980.
  10. Lescai, Francesco (2008). "Interview with Professor Fotis C. Kafatos, President of the European Research Council". New Biotechnology. 25 (1): 35–36. doi:10.1016/j.nbt.2008.04.006. PMID 18504013.
  11. Antonoyiannakis, M.; Hemmelskamp, J.; Kafatos, F. C. (2009). "The European Research Council Takes Flight". Cell. 136 (5): 805–809. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.02.031. PMID 19269357. S2CID 18725330.
  12. Gilbert, Natasha (2010). "The labours of Fotis Kafatos". Nature. 464 (7285): 20. doi:10.1038/464020a. PMID 20203577.
  13. Biography at European Research Council Archived 9 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  14. Anon (2017). "In Memoriam Fotis Kafatos".
  15. PubMed references (free full text references)
  16. Video and audio interview with Kafatos at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
  17. Holt, A.; Subramanian, M.; Halpern, A.; Sutton, G.; Charlab, R.; Nusskern, R.; Wincker, P.; Clark, G.; Ribeiro, M.; Wides, R.; Salzberg, S. L.; Loftus, B.; Yandell, M.; Majoros, W. H.; Rusch, D. B.; Lai, Z.; Kraft, C. L.; Abril, J. F.; Anthouard, V.; Arensburger, P.; Atkinson, P. W.; Baden, H.; De Berardinis, V.; Baldwin, D.; Benes, V.; Biedler, J.; Blass, C.; Bolanos, R.; Boscus, D.; et al. (2002). "The genome sequence of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae". Science. 298 (5591): 129–149. Bibcode:2002Sci...298..129H. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.149.9058. doi:10.1126/science.1076181. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 12364791. S2CID 4512225.
  18. Zheng, L.; Saunders, R. D.; Fortini, D.; Della Torre, A.; Coluzzi, M.; Glover, D. M.; Kafatos, F. C. (1991). "Low-resolution genome map of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 88 (24): 11187–11191. Bibcode:1991PNAS...8811187Z. doi:10.1073/pnas.88.24.11187. PMC 53099. PMID 1763031.
  19. "Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology". imbb.forth.gr.
  20. Hoffmann, J. A.; Kafatos, F. C.; Janeway, C. A.; Ezekowitz, R. A. (1999). "Phylogenetic Perspectives in Innate Immunity". Science. 284 (5418): 1313–1318. Bibcode:1999Sci...284.1313H. doi:10.1126/science.284.5418.1313. PMID 10334979.
  21. Abbott, Alison (1993). "Kafatos to be EMBL director; promises greater opportunity". Nature. 362 (6417): 198. Bibcode:1993Natur.362Q.198A. doi:10.1038/362198a0. PMID 8459842.
  22. EMBL. "EMBL History - EMBL". www.embl.de.
  23. Fotis Kafatos publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  24. Butcher, J. (2008). "Fotis Kafatos: President of the European Research Council". The Lancet. 371 (9610): 379. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)60189-0. PMID 18242403. S2CID 205949728.
  25. Louis, Christos; Goldsmith, Marian R. (2020). "Fotis C. Kafatos. 16 April 1940—18 November 2017". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 69: 273–289. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2020.0010. S2CID 218685745.


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