AIDS research pioneer dies

February 2, 2011—Laboratory Fellow and AIDS research pioneer Gerald “Gerry” Myers died at his Santa Fe home on January 25. “He was a remarkable man—a wonderful friend to many of us, and a mentor to me,” said Bette Korber of Theoretical Biology and Biophysics.

Myers responded to the emerging AIDS epidemic by founding Los Alamos’ HIV Sequence Database and Analysis Project in 1987 and becoming a prominent voice in the investigation of the origin and epidemiology of the AIDS virus.

Global pioneer

“Everyone in our field knew him when I started working on HIV,” said Korber, herself an internationally renowned AIDS geneticist. “Gerry realized the importance of collecting genetic data on the virus in one place for scientists around the world to use,” she continued. “By initiating the HIV database, he essentially invented the first pathogen database. That was such a radical thing at the time.” Los Alamos' database, which is used to collect, organize, annotate, and feed back collected HIV data, now serves the entire global AIDS research community.

Myers helped bring phylogenetics into the study of HIV, and he led research into the nomenclature system of AIDS clades and subtypes. He also succeeded in persuading the National Institutes of Health that the HIV database was worth funding. Later, he created other pathogen-related databases, including the Sexually Transmitted Disease Pathogen Sequence Database (STDGEN), the Human Papillomaviruses Sequence Database (HPV), the Oral Pathogen Sequence Database (ORGEN), and the Toxins and Virulence Factor Database (TVFac). These data collections are regarded as valuable resources by researchers around the world.

Teacher, scientist, outdoorsman

Myers was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1937. He held a doctorate from the University of Colorado Medical School and was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biophysics at Yale University. After teaching philosophy, literature, mathematics, and science at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, he joined the Laboratory in 1987. He was named Laboratory Fellow in 1994. 

After retiring from the Lab in 2001, Myers took up weaving and also loved to hike and fish. He is survived by his wife, Lynda; his mother, Estelle White; son Noah and daughter-in-law Rakhi; son Dane and daughter-in-law Melinda; daughters Geneva and Kendra; daughter-in-law Michelle; granddaughters Emily, Madeleine, and Natalie; and grandsons Amar and Kavi.

A memorial service is planned at a later date.