Morris Pollard, the giant in germfree animal research, former director of Lobund Laboratory, Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Dean at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, has passed away. As long as I have been in this field, he was there. At all our International Symposia in Gnotobiology (ISG), except for one, I met Morris – always friendly, alert, and eager to learn about the very last advances in the field. At the one he arranged in 1984 at the University of Notre Dame, he set the standard for all following meetings: presentations of excellent research in a friendly and warm atmosphere, i.e. Morris in a nutshell.
The one he did not attend took place in 1999 in Stockholm, and he had a very good reason not to come. His dear wife, Molly, went to hospital a day or two before their planned departure. Since then he visited Scandinavia and the Karolinska Institute several times. In 2009 he came for the last time to a Nobel Symposium and gave a wonderful lecture. Additionally, he gave a lecture at our cancer department about his famous animal model for studying prostate cancer. The auditorium was overcrowded. Morris Pollard, more than 90 years old, was still a primus inter pares. Again – Morris in a nutshell.
One evening during that meeting Morris and I discussed sports. He told me that the main interest at Notre Dame had switched from football to basketball. The next evening we went to a Scandinavian basketball tournament arranged in Stockholm. We were seated among some well known basketball experts, and I became more impressed than ever: Morris sat there discussing details about the rules and strategies of the game with top specialists, and they were listening carefully to what he had to say.
Morris Pollard was a great personality indeed. He always created a friendly atmosphere around him, he was an excellent scientist and he had deep knowledge in many different fields. He will be missed, but we, his friends, will always be grateful for having met him, and for the standard of life he set for all of us.
Tore Midtvedt
Former President of ISG