Fred­er­ick C. Nei­d­hardt (1931–2016). An Obit­u­ary

A tow­er­ing fig­ure in mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, our friend Fred Nei­d­hardt died on Oc­to­ber 7, 2016 at his re­tire­ment home, the Acad­emy Vil­lage near Tuc­son AZ. He made fun­da­men­tal and abid­ing con­tri­bu­tions to re­search, teach­ing, aca­d­e­mic ad­min­is­tra­tion, and so­cial is­sues. In each, he left deep-root­ed marks that made him greatly re­spected and highly beloved.

Fred­er­ick C. Nei­d­hardt (1931 − 2016). Source

His aca­d­e­mic life be­gan at Kenyon Col­lege, which he at­tended on a schol­ar­ship he re­ceived as a not-par­tic­u­larly ad­van­taged kid from Philadel­phia. He had a great love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for his al­ma mater, which con­ferred on him an hon­orary doc­tor­ate (one of three, the other two from Pur­due and Umeå, Swe­den). He got his Ph.D. from Har­vard with Boris Ma­g­a­sanik and did post­doc­to­ral work in Paris with Jacques Monod. He held fac­ulty po­si­tions at Har­vard, Pur­due, and Michi­gan, where he even­tu­ally ser­ved as chair of Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy and Vice Pres­i­dent for Re­search (when in this post, one of us asked him what his bud­get was. He replied: "One bil­lion dol­lars." "And your 'dis­pos­able bud­get'?" "Ten thou­sand dol­lars!" ). Fred ser­ved as pres­i­dent of the ASM and the Waks­man Foun­da­tion for Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, and on nu­mer­ous gov­ern­ment and pri­vate ad­vi­sory and ed­i­to­r­ial boards. His hon­ors in­clud­ed fel­low­ship in the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Arts and Sci­en­ces, the Ame­ri­can Aca­de­my of Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy and many oth­ers in this coun­try and abroad.

Fred took the lead in the de­vel­op­ment of bac­te­r­ial growth phys­i­ol­ogy. He ex­plained: "In­trigued by growth as the unique prop­erty of liv­ing sys­tems, I was cap­ti­vated upon first ob­serv­ing, early on in grad­u­ate school, the speed, ef­fi­ciency, and adapt­abil­ity of the growth of bac­te­r­ial cells such as Es­cherichia coli. I re­solved to learn all I could about how cells grow, and to do so by ex­plor­ing the phys­i­ol­ogy of bac­te­ria." Ac­cord­ingly, he made cen­trally im­por­tant, of­ten in­no­v­a­tive, con­tri­bu­tions to such phe­nom­ena as catabo­lite re­pres­sion, the strin­gent re­sponse, and the pat­terns of re­sponse to stress. He pi­o­neered in the de­vel­op­ment of crit­i­cal method­olo­gies. He was among the first to use con­di­tional mu­tants to study es­sen­tial processes in bac­te­ria. He de­vel­oped pro­teomics and is con­sid­ered the fa­ther of this field. He de­signed a syn­thetic medium (MOPS) that al­lowed the study phys­i­o­log­i­cal prop­er­ties of bac­te­ria in a re­pro­ducible way.

In an at­tempt to cen­tral­ize the knowl­edge of E. coli as the pre­mier model sys­tem in Bi­ol­ogy, he ini­tia­ted and be­came the ed­i­tor-in-chief of what be­came known as the 'E. coli  bible,' a two-vol­ume book called "Es­cherichia coli and Sal­mo­nella." An ex­am­ple of his pre­cise and num­bers-based ap­proach is his much-cited ta­ble of the com­po­si­tion of E. coli  found in this tome.

Based in part on his Quaker be­liefs, Fred was ac­tively en­gaged in is­sues rang­ing from equal­ity for women (for which he re­ceived the first ASM's Al­ice Evans award), to the sta­tus of mi­nori­ties in aca­demia and else­where, to jus­tice in the pe­nal sys­tem, to treat­ment of im­mi­grants.

The two of us wrote or co-edited five books with him (out of a to­tal of eight to his name), so we knew each other well enough to be able at times to fin­ish each other's sen­tences. We knew Fred from our early days in sci­ence. He spent a par­tial sab­bat­i­cal in one our labs (JI). In the late 1950's, one of us (MS) was a di­rect com­peti­tor of his on two oc­ca­sions. Once he pub­lished first, once MS did. Out of this came a deep and abid­ing friend­ship that lasted these many years. We will miss him. His wis­dom, his in­sights, and above, all his kind­ness and con­cern for his fel­low hu­mans. He was a men­sch.

Fred is sur­vived by three chil­dren, Rick, Jane, Marc, and three grand­chil­dren, Mia, Caitlin, and Mag­gie. In lieu of flow­ers, do­na­tions in Fred's name can be made to the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mittee or the Lee­lanau Con­ser­vancy.

Elio Schaechter and John In­gra­ham