World leading Greek biologist dies at 77

World leading Greek biologist, Fotis Kafatos, a renowned molecular biologist who had a distinguished academic career in both the United States and Europe and became the founding president of the European Research Council, has died at the age of 77.

After a long battle with illness, his family announced his death in Crete on Saturday. Born in Heraklion in 1940, Kafatos was most known for his research on malaria and for sequencing the genome of the mosquito that transmits the disease.

At 29 years of age, Fotis became the youngest professor ever appointed at Harvard University.   Here he pioneered game-changing technologies for molecular biology — cDNA cloning and the dot blot. Fotis’ team was the first to clone an entire mammalian gene, and to demonstrate that gene regulation sequences were the same in evolutionarily distant animals.

Kafatos was also a part-time professor at the University of Crete in his hometown since 1982. He also was the third director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, a life sciences research organisation from 1993 to 2005.

The distinguished biologist considered the 2007 founding of the European Research Council under the auspices of the European Commission as his most important achievement. The council funds and promotes projects driven by researchers. He stepped down as founding president in 2010, as he became disheartened by the bureaucratic rules that, in his mind, hampered research.

The influential research leader made tremendous contributions in the fields of genetics and genomics and his research and achievements has been acknowledged worldwide.