George; Warren was my boss for 4 years. My memory was at a party where 3 or 4 people were around him. He was carrying individual conversations with each of them. In real time. It was amazing to witness. My heart goes out.
Second story - I was next door to him, and noticed these black streaks on the floor in front of his office. There seemed to be a correlation with his shoes and these marks. He confirmed it by scuffing his heels dramatically about 15 times. And then helped clean up the marks.
We shared an office briefly, our interior office had the cheaper windows with the metal lattice. Or did when the building was first built. Warren was really distraught about those windows, and felt like they belonged in a mental hospital, not an interior office in an office building. He and the other person changed out windows late one night. The other person was never revealed, though his office ended up with the metal lattice windows. And yes, it was pretty easy to figure out who the other one was.
Although I never met Warren in person, we worked together extensively by email in the days when we were bringing PyMOL to the Apple platform for the first time. These experiences are among my cherished memories. Warren will obviously be missed and remembered.
Scientists all over the world are saddened by the loss of this bright young man - he really made a contribution to our world and the way we understand and visualize it.
I am one of those scientist that never meet Warren personally, but his kind assistant through email was of great assistance to me through the last few years. I can not help but feel the scientific world as well as the world at large is a lessor place without him.
Although we never met in person we had very quick email exchanges. He seemed to be tied to his computer - at least always when I asked for help. Pymol is a great piece of software, which has become the defacto standard for scientific publications. It's sad to hear he's gone, my condolences to Warren's family and friends.
I am shocked by the devastating news! I strongly feel that I, and literally all crystallographers who are active as of today, owe great credits to Dr. Delano for his invaluable contribution to the community. Warren is going to live in my heart forever. He surely has rested in peace and love, -yong
Warren has made a significant contribution to not just structural biology field, but also to many scientists who are interested in the art of structures. I have seen for many times, that scientists become enjoying of beautiful structures demonstrated by Pymol. Warren leaving is a big loss to the whole community. My condolences to his family and friends. And wish someone can push warren's work forward.
Like many others, I never had the chance to meet Warren and shake his hand, but I've spoken with him numerous times via e-mail. What always struck me was his thoughtful attention to all my comments and questions; Warren was truly a brilliant, friendly and helpful person. We are all the more fortunate to have known him and he will be missed. Our sincere condolences to his family.
All the people in our lab are deeply sorry, and we send our condolences to Warren's family. I had the opportunity to meet Warren last year. I was in Stanford and emailed him asking about the PyMOL users meetings that were held years ago. He said that they had been discontinued, but invited me to visit his office and see the last features in PyMOL. Just like that. It was impressive to watch him working in several computers simultaneously, implementing features on-the-fly as I was asking for them. And his passion about keeping PyMOL as open software was truly inspiring. It is really a sad day for science. We will sure miss him, and all the amazing work he could have done. Warren, que descansis en pau.
I did have the opportunity to meet Warren once. I was impressed by his intelligence, enthusiasm, and openness to suggestions.
There are a number of scientists of a certain type who are well known to the community, e.g. Axel Brunger, George Sheldrick, Alwyn Jones, Ton Spek, Gerard Kleywegt, Hendickson & Konnert, Dale Tronrund - I could go on...
In addition to doing outstanding science of their own, their efforts in developing and making software available to others has greatly magnified the productivity of the community. To them we should be most grateful.
Warren is certainly high on the list of such great scientists and people.
I am quite shocked at the sudden death of Warren. Although I had never met him in person, his emails on the various bulletin boards were part of my working life for quite a few years. Somehow I feel I have lost a friend and a pivotal reference point.
I have always been impressed by Warren's knowledge on computer graphics and by the wonderful tool he produced for the macromolecular community. Truly impressive stuff.
I am both shocked and saddened at the news of Warren's passing. I did not know Warren personally--only electronically through my interest in PyMOl--but I certainly regarded him as extraordinarily affable and helpful for someone so busy. It seems that no question, problem or suggestion was too small for him to address. His contribution to the structural biology community is inestimable. I am sure I am not the only member of the scientific community whose thoughts are with you in this difficult time.
My brother tried to help me overcome my fear of the dark as a child. He told me that there was George, the friendly ghost, who lived in my closet. George would take care of me, protect me from the night time monsters. It worked. The monsters never got me.
I am deeply saddened. My profound sympathies to Warren's family and friends. Warren's PyMol was a wonderful and powerful graphical display program for macromolecules. I used it many times for demonstrations of protein structures and to make beautiful pictures of proteins for publications.
Warren set an example of the highest standard in developing scientific tools and in supporting their application by any scientist who wished to use them. The fact that so many scientists, including myself, who have known him only via e-mail, feel so close to Warren speaks best for the person he was. It is very unfortunate for the Structural and Computational Biology community to loose Warren, but his outstanding values will remain eternal.
This is truly a great loss - although I have never met Warren, I am a big fan of PyMol, using it for all my structural work. Thanks for that Warren; you will be missed.
The structural biology community feels sometime like a large family with components spread throughout the world. Even if maybe we'll never meet each other personally, we exchange ideas and thoughts through e-mails on the various bulletin boards. Warren was not only a great contributor in terms of what he made with PyMOL (truly astonishing), but also with his promptness and will in trying to help people of the community with their problems. We'll be missing him day by day, as our 'family' has lost an important member...
What a tragic loss. There are only so many really great Open-Source scientific applications, and Warren managed to even combine it with a functional business.
Pymol was and continues to be one of the cornerstones of scientific visualization software in the Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux distributions, and is an integral part of the Debichem packaging effort for chemical and biochemical Open-Source software.
In the name of the Debichem team, my condolences go to his family. Warren will be dearly missed.
Warren's latest invoice for the yearly subscription we have with Pymol indicated as the "Bill to" organisation "C.N.R.S. (bonnes à payer)". Now CNRS is the main science employer in France and "bonnes à payer" literally means "only good to pay". Either a very good sense of humour or a remarkable knowledge of the French system.
Did you ever see how neat he kept his defunct computer equipment? He had bookshelves with plastic bins, filled with ziplock bags (to reduce dust), in turn filled with bygone mice, serial connectors, old modems (1200 baud!), I think I even remember motherboards and such. This was in his San Carlos apartment. The cables were usually neatly looped and twist tied.
Over the years I have created thousands of illustration with PyMOL. Part of my career is build around his program. Warren has touched so many thru his development of PyMOL... the world will feel his loss for a long time. My deepest condolences to his wife and family.
When Warren was a first-year graduate student at UCSF, I was a postdoc. My advisor had Warren come talk with me about a project that was particularly challenging and resistant to solution. For a fleeting moment, I worried about the embarrassment I might feel if this 'kid', fresh out of college, solved my problem in mere minutes! Yeah, well, I got over that pronto, was glad for the help and learned a few things!
In more recent years, interactions with Warren have centered around PyMol - whether asking questions and getting instant, patient and thorough answers, renewing my group's subscription to the software, or getting academic access for use in a course every year.
The memory that is most vivid - and all the more poingnant now - is an e-mail Warren sent when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor about a year ago. Here is part of that note from Warren:
"...I am so sorry to read your startling news. Not a one of us is excused from life-altering biology and random accidents, any of which can strike suddenly without warning. For that reason, we must never take anything for granted. Not a single day. Not a single friend. But as you well know, there are only two things we can do in defiance of chance, whether in sickness or in health: (1) Do everything you feel is important in life, today, or as soon as possible. (2) Never give up. Ignore the odds. Always believe you will survive and thrive....."
Upon reading that, I knew that 'kid' had matured into a wonderfully thoughtful, caring and empathetic man.
To Warren, I hope you are at peace and I hope you can feel the love and admiration from your friends, colleagues and family. You will be so incredibly missed - for who you were, not just for what you accomplished and gave us all.
To Warren's family and friends, my sincerest condolences are with you...and I wish you healing.
I never met Warren. But earlier this year we chatted on the phone for an hour. His openness to talking, his encouragement, his humor and his honesty meant I left that call feeling connected and wanting to meet face to face with Warren when I had the opportunity. His contributions to the community are immense and will continue. His work has fans around the world and his spirit, passion to contribute and giveaways to our community will help to reflect who he was in life. I am saddened.
I did not know Warren, but I am like 1000s of others who used his software. I was always impressed by the committment to free access software and this has served as an inspiration in an otherwise very commercial world.
I've known Warren as a colleague and friend for many years. Although we only met in person occasionally (mostly we corresponded via email), when we managed to meet in person at trade shows and conferences, we'd spend hours talking about science, computers, and especially the social and philosophical aspects of free software and community projects.
The thing everyone noticed immediately about Warren was that he was both a brilliant scientists, and a genuinely nice guy. He was always friendly, loved to listen to ideas from his fellow scientists, and when he made his own contributions to the conversation, he showed true insight.
It's no exaggeration to say that Warren's work has been hugely important. Lives are being saved and made better, every day, around the world, as a direct result of Warren's work. Drug discovery is a hugely complex task, but it's simpler, better, and faster today because of PyMol. Warren's work will improve the lives of countless people, worldwide, for years and even decades to come.
Warren's life was far too short, but in a very real way, his life and work will carry on, making the world a better place for all of us, for a long, long time.
I never met Warren in real-life, but we have met in several forums, eMails, and other next generation media. I honestly think he was one of the most influential life science informatics persons in many ways, a scientific and natural leader. He has paved a way for many of us. He will never be forgotten! Still, it is so sad, *short break*, if the internet would be a street, you could see us all forming a guard of honor on it.
Just about every time I spoke with Warren it gave me a huge lift. I felt so lucky to know him -- a brilliant and generous soul, filled with idealism and electric energy.
I met Warren this fall durng the Blue Obelisk dinner at the Fall 2009 national meeting of the American Chemical society in Washington DC and am truly shocked and lacking words to say. Even though I only met him this one time he left a long and lasting impression on me and I am just finding this hard to believe. We will all miss him.
I was so sorry to hear the news. Warren was a good friend during high school. Those were good times; Jen, back then you used to call me "Pear Head". :) I only saw him a couple of times in the years since, once when he visited me in Boston during college, and briefly at a reunion. I meant to re-connect again when I ran into a mutual friend, and I'll always regret that I let that slip by. My condolences.
I will dearly miss Warren - his dry wit and excellent sense of humor (and deep knowledge of course!) helped me overcome quite a few challenges in using Pymol for things it was never inteded to do (but did well, anyway).
My deepest condolences to Warren's family and close friends.
I knew Warren since his graduate school days at UCSF. I have far too many memories to list, from lunches in the neighborhood around UCSF, to his bachelor party, to visits at his office and his garage filled with computers and hard drives... He was one of the nicest people I know, always cheerful and enthusiastic about every aspect of work, science and life. I'm typing this at beamline 8.3.1 at Berkeley's Advanced Light Source and in the iMac's tool bar is the now nearly ubiquitous PyMol icon, truly a lasting legacy from a remarkable individual. I will think of Warren often and always fondly.
I've met and talked with Warren many times over the years over email, on the phone, and in person. He was always a friendly person, obviously bright, and highly motivated. I develop a molecular visualization tool called VMD, and early on when Warren was working on PyMol he called me up on the phone out of the blue and asked me whether I thought there was "room for another molecular visualization program" in the field despite the existence of the one I work on as well as many other good programs. I told him I thought that there would definitely be plenty of space for another good program and that he should definitely go ahead with his ambitions of making PyMol a serious long-term effort. Warren deftly navigated the ocean of existing scientific software, and made PyMol a unique, easy-to-use, and extremely popular tool within the scientific community. He did this through a tremendous amount of his own hard work and by cooperating with his own users, and even with "competitors" like me, by sharing and exchanging code, knowledge, and advice. I never had the opportunity to know Warren as a close friend, but he was the kind of creative, open, friendly, and honest person that everyone wants to have as a close friend. If more scientists and software developers followed Warren's example by collaborating and even competing in a more collegial and cooperative manner, the world would be a better place. Warren accomplished a lot and made a very positive impact on the scientific community, he'll be sorely missed.
Like so many others I am shocked by this event. Being only two years older, this comes very close. I know Warren from my period as head developer of Jmol, where we discussed how to improve portability of molecular scenes between the two open source visualization tools, and shared our passion for the open source ideology. His contributions to this fields are considerable and do not restrict itself to providing PyMOL but extend itself to the whole Open Source in science idea.
i was struck by the news. many times i have asked a question of the pymol wiki and was sort of stunned that Warren would personally reply. i didn't know much aout him but was struck by his cheerful demeanor and willingness to help with even small problems.
I met Warren over 10 years ago at a workshop at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We both reported on our respective software tools for molecular visualization and the connection was instantaneous. Warren offered to drive me back to San Francisco where I was staying so that we would have more time to talk after the workshop was over. I was struck by his enthusiasm combined with his eloquence, wit, and diplomacy. Warren has been a driving force in the development of open source molecular visualization tools and he will be sorely missed by many. My condolences to his family and to Warren: rest in peace
I first met Warren at Apple WWDC and we corresponded over the years. He always helpful and had the happy knack of explaining both the trivial and complex in an engaging style. He will be sorely missed.
I remember Warren from elementary school. He was a pretty nice guy, always great in math and science and someone friendly to hang out with. Being grade school...most of my memories with him revolve around handball games and the occasional interest into dungeons and dragrons. Am glad that I got to see him a couple of years ago, but am sad to hear that he has moved on. After reading his profile I didn't realize how much of a contribution he had made in the scientific community. Amazing.
I am still so shocked and saddened. My heartfelt condolences to his family.
Warren was so full of energy and enthusiasm, every time you met with him you came away motivated to get great work done.
I feel very lucky to have had the chance to work with Warren over the last few years. Such a genuine, friendly and incredibly talented individual. He will be sorely missed.
I, like many others, first met Warren via mailing lists. Literally from my first interaction with him, I was in awe of him. He was, among other things, one of the most brilliant, dedicated, kind, and motivated people that I've met. His constant desire and ability to contribute to his vision of open science was unparalleled.
One of the most telling things is the sheer number of people who will tell you how helpful he was to them personally, as evidenced by the flurry of blog and mailing-list posts in the past several days.
He was an inspiration as both a scientist and as a person. I considered him both a friend and a hero.
I feel close to the family of Warren. The scientific community lost a pioneer in computer graphics. His dedication and love for science was perceived by everybody who interacted with him, even if just through emails.
I've known Warren for a number of years and have come to regard him as nearly a surrogate member of my lab: he is always just "there" for cheerful and enthusiastic support, ideas and solutions. While our ideas and suggestions were truly minor, he always welcomed them and made us feel like valued collaborators. His ideas and his contributions have become essential tools in our daily work, translating the complex into the readily understandable and, even, the strikingly beautiful. I cannot imagine how we will progress in science at the rate that we have enjoyed without his continued insights and developments. I am so deeply saddened by this loss to science, to his family and friends and to society in general. I hope & trust that the scientific community will come together to both maintain and continue his work.
Sometime either in 2001 or 2002, there was a visiting scientist who spent a couple of weeks in the Luger lab. I was a PhD student in the Luger lab at the time. Towards the end of his visit, the visitor presented some spectacular graphics in the Luger lab meeting. Then and there, I decided to pin him down and ask him more about the program. He said he used a program called PyMOL to make those cool displays. I sweet-talked this person into spending a few minutes at the graphics station to just show me a thing or two about the program. That was my initiation into PyMOL and there was no looking back. Everyone in the Luger lab quickly became a PyMOL-convert; the conversion process was effortless.
A couple weeks later, I caught the grad student from the neighboring lab staring at our graphics screen and the rest is history. I have never stopped initiating folks into PyMOL since. I have always loved the fact that PyMOL is free and extraordinarily user-friendly!
Warren DeLano. Never met the man. But have always heard his name mentioned in the crystallographic circles in the context of CNS and PyMOL. Now I join the 100's (if not 1000's) of PyMOL amateurs who exchanged dozens of emails with Warren with queries about PyMOL. Despite many of these things being clearly outlined in the manual, no query was too small. Warren would help me take baby steps until I got things sorted out. With those incessant email queries, it will remain a wonder to me as to how Warren made the time to reply so promptly, and as to how he kept the language in his emails friendly, pleasant and helpful. Like PyMOL, to me, Warren was extremely user-friendly.
Though I did not know the man in person, I am deeply saddened by the news of his sudden passing at such a young ago. My condolences go out to his friends and family.
To the crystallographic community and to others who ever PyMOL or CNS, Warren DeLano will continue to live through the fantastic attitude with which he communicated with the end users and through his fabulous contributions to the scientific community!
I've never met him in person, but I've had periodic email conversations with him. He was always a very helpful person.
His contribution to structural biology has been greater than perhaps is recognized. PyMOL is a tool that I've used extensively for years and has greatly facilitated our structure work. He was an excellent proponent of open source software.
It was truly shocking to hear of his untimely passing.
Warren came into Sunesis as a scientist and that he ever was, but his talent for everything computers was easily recognizable. In addition, the only faster than his amazing intellect was possible his typing. I remember one day watching him "hack-back" someone from an Eastern Block country and successfully shut down the other hacker's computer as they fought online in real time. Go Warren! I'm so sorry we're without you now. Ken
I first met Warren in 2005 when we hunted for an obscure conference site on the USCD campus. I found out two presentations later that he developed the famous tool I used weekly and had taught to other medical illustrators for many years. My friend Janet Iwasa, reconnected us months later and Warren invited me to work with him on a large complicated animation project. We enthusiastically fired emails, test movies, and scripts back and forth through the winter holidays just to get up and running and to win the bid. He seemed to be at it 24 hours a day and I did my best just to keep up as he helped merge his powerful molecular visualization applications into my more familiar commercial animation environments. I learned a great deal about scripting, molecular visualization, and business through this collaboration and enjoyed all of my interactions with Warren. He could really make atoms dance!
Beyond that project, Warren assembled several custom versions of Pymol over the years to help improve my teaching demonstrations and to make tools for my particular audiences more accessible. He would send these to me after a single emailed request in a matter of hours with clear instructions on how to help the people in my field more accurately spread the knowledge of molecular and cell biology as the PDB rapidly fleshed out. I enjoyed meeting with him on several occasions over the years, and he will be deeply missed as a mentor, friend, and contributor to education and outreach. Graham Johnson
I knew Warren in high school. As I sit here remembering those days and thinking of Warren, I remember his high energy & enthusiasm. I also remember that brown Honda screaming through the Gunn parking lot. How Warren explained to me that leaving cold pizza wrapped in foil on his dashboard in the morning meant having hot pizza by lunch time. Still not sure about that one. We did not stay in touch since those days, but given how crazy smart he was back then I’m not surprised to read about the wonderful impact he had in scientific community. I’m sure he will be greatly missed. My sincere condolences to his family.
I thought about using PyMOL once several years ago, but then somehow I set it aside and never took it up again. However because of my own laziness I never bothered to have myself removed from the listserv. My point is that even someone as disconnected as I am from the PyMOL community can't help but notice how dedicated he was to helping other people. The number of emails that come through bearing his name -- all of which contain some hint, trick, tip, suggestion or other useful morsel of information -- are unequivocal proof of his peerless commitment to science.
I never meet Warren personally, but by mail on the PyMOL list. We had some conversations and he oriented me on my projects. As I said on the Pymol list, Is contribution to science and to society is difficult to measure. The altruistic way in which he chose to use his talent have been important for so many scientist, not only because of the great program, but also because of himself as a role model for starting scientists like myself. I also menctioned on the list that Through he never knew Warren was on the Thanks section of my undergrad thesis.
Your brother was a great man, not just a brilliant scientist, also a kind person. Some who never rested in his commitment of making this world better. I am deeply sad about his loss.
Back in August, 2008, when Warren first started working with Schrodinger, we went to dinner at Keen's Chop House. I remember a wonderful meal, wonderful company, wonderful drinks, and an evening that lasted longer than I think either of us had anticipated. I was very happy that we ended up collaborating. Schrodinger customers, many of whom are also PyMOL customers, have been very happy with the bridge between our products that Warren crafted. Warren visited our New York offices regularly. Many of us knew him, and we are all in shock at the moment, myself included. But at the same time, my thoughts of Warren will always include this happy memory.
I can't believe that news. Before this day, I always find an immediate anwser to anybody's question about PyMOL. It's a really bad news to all of us PyMOL users. As a sincere fans of PyMOL, I once recommonded it to other people. He will be remembered by all of us for ever.
With my condolences to his family A chinese research scholar
Warren loved to have the dashboard pizza in high school. Thanks to the post about that! Our mother was horrified about him doing that. But it did work.
I first met Warren in early 2001 when I was a postdoc at Stanford. It was supposed to be a quick phone call about some minor interface stuff between Gromacs and PyMol, but the next day he came down to Stanford instead, and the whole project morphed into a great discussion about science and personal friendship instead. Warren always shared his time and commitment with everybody, no matter if it was a nobel laureate or anonymous student, and you always felt it was genuine.
I'm so sad to hear this news - my first thoughts go to his family, but also because the world has lost a great scientist who touched a lot of lives. We frequently say "great scientist" about people who have been extremely successful in one way or another, but the greatest scientists of all is the one who pursues science for knowledge itself, without much thought of personal fame or gain, and I've always been amazed how Warren fit that description much better than most of us pursuing academic careers.
In just a few years, Warren changed the lives of tens of thousands of people all over the world, but never made a big deal out of it. Jen - I'm sure you know what an amazing brother you had. Although nothing we say can dampen your sorrow, it is shared by people all over the world, both today and tomorrow.
Warren - we'll never forget you, and if at all possible I'd love to help maintain your legacy by contributing more to PyMol!
I met Warren more that 10 years ago when he was at Sunesis, and I have had the pleasure of interacting and collaborating with him on many occasions throughout the years. As a scientist he was knowledgeable and competent. As a human being, he was kind, humorous and very pleasant to be around. I will miss his demeanor and his smile. I extend my deepest condolences to his family and loved ones. I hope they find comfort in the fact that Warren will be rememberd so well by so many.
Warren was a member of the Blue Obelisk - a community which espoused the ideals of getting new and innovative software to the community. I met Warren at Blue Obelisk dinners where he generously sponsored the event and where he explained his philosophy of sustainable Open Source. Open Source is not easily sustainable in science and I hold PyMOL up as a leading example of how it can be done - where source can be both Open and generate an income stream. I've tried to learn from his ideas and I am sure we shall need them.
I first met Warren when he joined the Biophysics graduate program at UCSF around the time I was completing my studies in the same program. Back then I was struck by his poise and friendliness and impressed by his accomplishments as an undergraduate working with Axel. In later years I was particularly impressed to hear about his efforts to develop and distribute PyMOL as an open source product. That is the sort of pioneering spirit that I will always associate with California. I last saw Warren at an ACS meeting, where he greeted me with a friendly smile. He will be greatly missed in our community.
I'm deeply saddened by this news. Warren was brilliant but even more importantly, he was sensitive, ethical, thoughtful, and kind. He was a friend both in college and graduate school. The last time I saw him, he was so full of joy and so proud of Pymol. We had been out of touch for a few years and he showed me his amazing collection of journal covers with Pymol structures. We had lunch and talked about life and ranted together about religion and philosophy in the sunshine of downtown Palo Alto. I will always remember his infectious smile and that hair flip (you know what I'm talking about). To his family: please take care of yourselves. This is truly a difficult loss. --Mimi Shirasu-Hiza
As a fellow Brunger lab alumni, I met Warren in both professional and social situations. He was a great guy and the contributions he made to science through his PyMol efforts and other work are incredible. I always felt honored to be chosen as an early test user and even moreso when he incorporated my suggestions into subsequent release. I recall someone saying of him that he was so active and bright that he was probably computing the amount of ATP that his brain was using as he was conversing you.
Although I have never met Warren in real-life, we have exchanged emails and met us on several forums.
Warren was always willing to help others and finding new solutions. He achieves a brilliant success by developing PyMOL and promoting Open Source in science idea.
I had dinner with Warren and a group of colleagues three weeks ago when he was in Philadelphia. The next afternoon he and Jason gave a very helpful PyMol tutorial at GSK to computational and medicinal chemists. "Just send me an email" he responded when I asked him what I was going to do the next time I got stuck trying to figure something out in PyMol.
Five years ago I invited Warren to present at an ACS Chemical Education symposium. I didn't know him then and wasn't sure he'd agree. But he graciously accepted and presented "Use of PyMOL as a communications tool for molecular science". He had a unique combination of intelligence, enthusiasm, generosity, and humility and will be deeply missed. May his memory be for a blessing.
I am a PhD student working of biochemistry and structural biology. I have not met Dr. DeLano or communicated with him, but I have been using PyMol for years in both my courses and my research. I really appreciate his contributions to the research of structural biology.
How many drugs have progressed through research and beyondm thanks to Warren's efforts to help us visualise the world of drugs and drug targets on a molecular scale (particularly in smaller enterprises)? A tremendous and fitting legacy.
I met Warren once, at the ACS National Meeting. A genuinely nice chap who I was looknig forward to hopefully catching up with again next year. My thougts are with you at this sad time.
Living/working in the San Francisco bay area I had the pleasure of knowing Warren for a number of years. A while back we were both in Portland, OR for a conference and caught a ride together to the airport.
The flight back to SF was delayed and we were stuck at the airport for a few hours. We both pulled out our laptops (or in Warren's case, one of his laptops), but it turned out that wireless was not available.
No problem, Warren said, I'll just throw up a cloud.
A what?
A cloud.
Well I am still not sure I know what a cloud is but after a few clicks and a little typing he was hosting his own Wi-Fi network at gate 7. Naturally, access was free and open to everyone.
When I first asked a difficult question about virus representations with Pymol, I received a reply from Warren himself. I was impressed by the fact that he himself personally replied. Furthermore I was impressed with the speed, efficacy, personable tone and sweet undertone to his reply.
It is a sad loss to the World to loose a bright mind associated with a kind heart.
Rest in Peace - You made the World a better place.
I knew Warren from attending the same junior high and high school. I remember him to be a very kind person with a wonderful smile. I hadn't seen him in years but was recently reconnected with him via facebook. My heart sank when I heard the news today. I send my sincere condolences to his family and friends.
I also met him at an ACS meeting, and was struck by him. It was exciting to meet a science "celebrity" of sorts, but more than that his ideas about research and our community were easy to get behind. His kind smile and immediate friendliness was extended to a total stranger amongst a sea of them.
My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.
I couldn't believe this sad news! I know PyMOL before I know Warren. I met him once in a meeting. He is such a nice person. Warren will be remembered for ever!
Warren will be dearly missed by all of the crystallographers all over the world. I never met him personally but had several times recieved personal messages from him for questions posted at pymol forum and benefitted trmendously for making my presentations and publications more meanigful and prettier. When i started my career in crystallography it took for me to make a good publishable picture in molscript and bobscript at least few days. When pymol came things have changed from days to few hours of effort and the pictures looked as beautiful and meanigful as molscript figures. I am sure the whole crystallography community will agree with this feeling. Loss of a genius like Warren is Himalyan. Our heart felt condolences to all of his family. and loved ones.
I have never met Warren personally. I’m one of those researches that use Pymol for research and scientific illustration. I’m truly sad to hear that Warren is gone. His work with Pymol had a profound impact in my scientific life. My condolences to Warren’s family.
Over the last 10 years I've had the pleasure of hanging out with Warren at conferences, dozens of phone conversations and countless email exchanges. I've always been amazed at how someone so brilliant could be so humble. Warren was always eager to discuss new ideas and really went out of his way to insure that others could do the best science possible. Warren had numerous opportunities to "sell out", but stayed true to his vision.
I have known Warren since his Yale days and most recently saw him at the eChemInfo meeting in Bryn Mawr, a mere three weeks ago, when he was his usual self - very knowledgeable, bright, kind and generous.
At the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe), we use PyMOL to generate most of the molecular structure images on our site.
On behalf of the PDBe team, I wish his family and friends the strength to cope with this untimely loss.
Jen and family you have my condolences. I met Warren briefly following his talk at a recent ACS meeting. I did not know him well but I am deeply saddened by his loss. The research community has surely lost a rising star.
One Tuesday night this past February, a handful of young sciencey types gathered for an open science-themed meetup at the Prolific Oven in Palo Alto. Broadcast at short notice through FriendFeed and blogs, the gathering was small and I didn't know who was going to show up (if at anyone!). It ended up being two guys from Labmeeting.com (the organizers), a guy from or formerly from Merck, myself - a graduate student at Stanford, .... and none other than Warren DeLano.
At the time, there seemed nothing out of the ordinary. But it was truly a wonderful thing that the creator of PyMOL would take a break from his work to stop by that blustery night (probably just taking a break from his work that evening) and engage in a discussion about open source and open science with a group of young science enthusiasts. I used PyMOL often in my graduate work (indeed, the "pretty pictures" were sometimes the only bright spot in the doldrums of a PhD!) and the fact that he was essentially a one-man show makes his contributions and his commitment to helping others even more incredible.
May all the memories of Warren inspire scientists everywhere to have the same generosity of spirit. His passing is a huge loss to the scientific community but his life was a tremendous gift.
Very sorry to hear about Warren's passing. I met him at a trade show, and found him to be remarkably engaging, friendly, and down to earth. Not to mention very smart! The world, and the field, has lost one of its good guys, unselfish, and an example-setter. My condolences to you and your family
Many have commented on how engaged and helpful Warren was regarding questions about Pymol. The example below, which is posted on the website, is one of my favorites:
# (3/8/2002) A recent anonymous question came in regarding display of Bulgarian maps. Many of you will surely be relieved to learn that, Yes, PyMOL can indeed display Bulgarian Maps should the need arise. Just convert your Bulgarian map into "png" format prior to attempting this challenging feat, and then issue the carefully chosen commands:
I had the fortune of meeting Warren for the first time 5 years ago at a ACS meeting. We had lunch together - well, kind of - he only wanted a strawberry shake so that he could continue to show me PyMOL. Warren said, "Having a real lunch would distract me from showing you the coolness of this software". He was such a humble, easy to access kind of person. Literally, I knew that if I emailed him, he would respond quickly. It's such a complete shock and I'm so saddened by our loss. My heart goes out to his family.
I have many memories from the decade-plus that I was fortunate enough to know Warren, but one happened so often that it is emblematic of how I think of him. I’d be in Warren’s office discussing some scientific problem, and he would be typing so fast that his hands would blur and the normal click-click-click of the keyboard sounded more like white noise. I would always think that no matter how fast he typed his mind was racing far, far ahead, impatient with the limits of a clumsy human-machine interface.
He will always be remembered as the pioneer in molecular graphics. Although I have never met him in person, he was actually the reason that I enjoyed structural biology... When I started using PyMol, I just knew that I would like to study in this field. Now, after graduating, I am a phD student in another country, using PyMol everyday. I wouldn't have been a researcher if it wasn't Warren DeLano.
My deepest condolences to his family. I feel sadness for his early journey.
So sorry to hear this. Warren was a great inspiration and mentor. At Sunesis he helped me overcome my fear of Unix. Despite his superior smarts and world-renowned scientific sophistication, he was never too good for a jaunt to the taco truck. My deepest condolences to family.
Never met or communicated with Warren, but have been in awe of him because of the extent of his contibution to Science, Computing and Open Source. Difficult to believe he was so young.
Over the past 4 months or so, I had the pleasure of working closely with Warren. We were planning PyMOL2.0 and other great software ideas to spawn into a new company. I could write tons of stuff here, but I'll limit it to a couple things.
Warren was brilliant and full of energy. As we sat through meetings in DC (Amer. Chem. Soc.), Philadelphia (GSK), and San Fran. (Elan) I noticed something. If Warren was interested in what you were saying, regardless of whether or not he agreed with you, he would quickly bounce his knee or tap his foot. His level of excitement could be measured by the speed of the tapping. If the foot was tapping quickly, you better hope he agreed with your point of view.
Warren loved intellectual challenges. I wrote a small molecular fitting routine from a well-known reference (Kabsch). Warren invented his own using a series of Jacobi rotations. One day it was brought to his attention that my implementation was generally better at fitting by about 0.1 Angstroms or so. Thirty seconds after he saw that email, my phone rang. He wanted me to walk him through my implementation and discuss the differences. We argued over the effects of Jacobi rotations and its effect on annihilating off-diagonal covariance terms as compared to using the singular value decomposition. He then changed one variable in his code, and our solutions matched to at least 0.000001 Angstroms. In the end, his solution was far faster and just as accurate.
In closing, here's a quote from Warren: "PyMOL is proof that you don't have to be the smartest to make something useful, you can be of average intelligence but work really hard." Truth is, he was way smarter than nearly all of us.
I met Warren nearly two weeks ago at ASBMB conference at Lake Tahoe kindly co-sponsored by him. I was impressed by his extraordinary creativity, enthusiasm and determination. I'll never forget his charming smile, his generosity and kindness.
I use Pymol on a daily basis, it is an integral part of my work. Thank you for this wonderful tool, Warren! You made the world of small molecules looking beautiful and magic.
I'm deeply saddened by his loss. My deepest and most sincere condolences to his family. My heart is with you.
The first time I met Warren was playing pool at a conference in Santa Fe. In between talk about chilli and snow and having fun with (and making fun at) the other people at the conference, I spoke with him about Pymol and how we could get our company to contribute to his work even though Warren gave his work away freely.
Like others have commented, I was struck by how down to earth he was despite his obvious achievements and impact on our scientific community.
Warren will leave a gap in our community in terms of his software but also and much more importantly in terms of his ethics and personality.
I remember the first time I met Warren at his lab at Sunesis. I said to Jen: "Wow, if he was wearing lipstick he'd look just like you." I think Warren was little nonplussed by this at the time but we laughed about it afterwards. Later, at dinner parties, we sometimes butted heads over political issues. But I always knew that I was talking to the smartest guy in the room – someone who was not afraid call you out on your logical errors, though in his own well-mannered, highly articulate and laconic way. His many accomplishments – accomplished in such a short span of time – continue to amaze me. He was an amazing fellow that the world will rightly miss.
I've known Warren for 10+ years, since we were graduate students together at UCSF. And like every other biochemist on earth, I was an active user of Pymol. I recently moved back to the bay area and randomly ran into Warren and Beth at the local grocery store a few weeks ago. He seemed happy as ever that PyMol was doing so well. I am so proud of what he accomplished -- his legacy in the form of Pymol will be everlasting. My sincerest condolences to his wife & family. I will think of Warren often and remember his generosity, intelligence, and warmth.
Whilst I never met Warren, I have loved using Pymol and his hands on approach to his "business" has made its mark on me. It is great that a scientist like Warren has been able to fulfil his dream. I had wanted to say thanks in person but.... thanks Warren. There are very few in the world who have touch so many as he has. My emotions to his passing have surprised me as I'm sure most will agree, there was always an email waiting for you in your in box..... bye
I remember finding PyMol for the first time and getting so excited about all of the innovations and slickness it had to offer. I knew it would take over like wildfire (as we all know, it did).
PyMol offered a view into the mind of someone who was very smart, creative and expedient. Warren's devotation to open/free software was inspiring.
I have to admit I was a little intimidated seeing Warren at a workshop, "That's the guy that wrote PyMol!". He was kind enough to omplement me on one of my comments, and I felt proud.
My depest condolences to his family, it is so clear Warren was an extraordinary human being.
Good bye, Warren. Even though I only met you briefly, I remember you as kind and cheerful. And PyMol is a wonderful contribution. My colleagues and I use it frequently. We will miss you.
I met Warren at a few conferences at Asilomar and elsewhere, and his constant enthusiasm for science and for life energized everyone around him. Our discussions about how to make a living off niche open-source software were enlightening, and PyMol was truly an amazing gift to the community.
It wasn't just Warren's brain that worked super fast, or his fingers on the keyboard moving the speed of light, making that familiar noise, but everything he would do, it would be done with an amazing speed. I remember the day when he came to George's and my office, sat down to what he thought it was our guest chair. Very quickly, gets up, lifts the chair up and flips it over, he then started moving all kinds of parts and buttons on the chair, mubling something that I could understand, but all I could get was, that he didn't like the chair's setting. George and I were just shocked and amused at the same time, and finally George says "Dude, what are you doing, that's my chair" ...Warren's look ...priceless!
I will miss you very much Warren. It was honor to know you and work with you. Rest in Peace
I remember a time back in the early days of Sunesis when Warren was not feeeling well due to kidney stones. It got worse as the day went and he ended up throwing up and was lying on the floor in pain (we didn't have much furniture back then) so we decided to take him to the ER. Even though he was in great pain, he still managed to joke and laugh - I think it was something about the possibility of getting sick in Andrew's nice car. His big smile always comes to mind when I think of him and it was there even as we were hauling him off to the ER.
I was very sad today by learning with surprise of Warren's death. I still remember his very efficient method of teaching the use of easy commands for his wonderful "machine" PyMOL. Warren has been always very quick in getting in touch with every user's request. He was always very ready and cheerful to everyone. PyMOL was shining by Warren's extraordinary personality and I will remember him like I would regard a great artist from Renascence. We will remember Warren's great and humble example of gratuity! You Warren rest in peace.
Our wedding ceremony would not have had music if it was not for Warren. I had left my IPod for the DJ but something went wrong. I was in the bridal room getting ready when a friend barged in exclaiming, "Do you have your wedding music on your laptop?" Me: "Yes." Friend: "Then Warren needs your password to your laptop or you are not going to have music for the ceremony!!!" He was then able to get the music off the laptop and set everything straight. He also then took the laptop and set up the rotating photo slide show in the lobby. He helped us out tremendously that day. And, he was a wedding guest who had just arrived!
Warren, you will truly be missed. Thank you for all the wonderful memories over the years. Rest In Peace.
Warren and I were sort of music buddies in high school, even though our specific interests in that department didn't really overlap much. I had no taste for the technological side of it at all! He was clearly extremely talented, though. If he hadn't become a scientist, he could just as well have made his mark in music... or in anything else he had chosen to pursue. I have no doubt about that. What a great person to know and a cherished friend. My sincere condolences.
Well I've managed to go and post in the wrong section. I think Warren, having helped me on several pymol-related projects and seen my primitive efforts at coding, would not be surprised! But to review my other post, Warren was really an amazing man to have created what he did and to give such individual attention it seems to each of the thousands in this community he heroically created. I wish him and his family peace and condolences. -Seth Harris
I never had the pleasure of meeting Warren but exchanged emails with him when I needed a bit of help with this or that part of his wonderful PyMOL program. He was unfailingly prompt in replying to my queries and always generous with his time.
After our last exchange I gratefully invited him to come out for a beer next time he was passing through London. Sadly that will never happen. I was shocked to learn how young he was and send my sincere condolences to his family.
It is very very sad to have your sudden premature demise! The community will always remember you for your great contribution.. It is hard to explain our grief in words!
I had the privilege to have met Warren a couple of times... In 2004 we invited him, together with Martin Noble, to deliver a seminar about PyMol in the annual CCP4 meeting. He presented the most amazing seminar which was as you can imagine impeccably and outstandingly illustrated with PyMol pictures. One of the things that speakers are expected to do after the meeting though, is to write-up a paper about their presentation. Warren was trying to evade that, and I recall being quite angry with him for not writing up ... (we could had had in the same issue of ActaD Coot,Pymol and CCP4mg published ... alas ... when I sent him my final request I had to laugh out loud when he sent back a very polite and very apologetic and really very very long email (arguably publication-length) explaining in excruciating detail the reasons he did not have time to write a long paper! Unfortunately I was unable to find a copy. Since then we have remained in email contact, and these emails allowed me to realize that Warren was a professional, but also a playful mind and a true visionary. I am pasting a small text he had sent me about a year ago, when we were chatting about ideas on human interfaces for PyMol control:
> ... I think we could do > even better with stereo cameras and good 3D depth-perception software. > Why shouldn't I should be able to control PyMOL simply by moving my > fingers in front of the camera? Another intriguing idea would be a simple lens that fits over the > monoscopic camera breaking it into two juxtaposed images which form a > stereo pair...
I hope his 'wild ideas' like this one will come true soon, and that the outstanding work and open source he left behind will surely catalyze new exciting developments for the future. In a way, he will remain for long an alive part of our community through his contributions.
Dr. Warren L. Delano made major contributions as a computational scientist and developer of PyMOL. I supported his campaign to have Stereo 3D capability on the Apple platform. Just one of his many ideas.
We are all very sad for Dr. Warren Lyford DeLano's passing away! Structural biologists all over the world will remember him and his invaluable contribution for ever!
I've never really been a PyMOL user, having concentrated on computational codes throughout my career. However, I talked to Warren a number of times over the last few years: about his work, the business and his strong feelings towards open-source coding.
I've not met too many people who single-handedly changed the marketplace. Warren is comparable to Linus and his creation of Linux with regards to our myriad modeling interests. His work created similar levels of enthusiasm and "customer satisfaction". He put forth a staggering amount of work, more than I would have thought possible.
It is appropriate for PyMOL to remain as a legacy, and I hope that it continues as a vibrant piece of work.
Warren has lived two ideals to an unprecedented extent. The ideal of Free Software, that is, humanism in a cold world, ethic in software development, and the concern about the social aspects surrounding Software and Computers in our digital era; and the ideal of Open Source, that is, the quest for quality, for robustness and for versatility which are shining through the extraordinary code that he published.
Warren has also setup a unique business-model for the distribution of PyMOL which courageously attempted to put those ideals into practice. This has had the virtue to put us, the customers, in front of our own responsibilities when it came to supporting those immaterial but essential aspects of our infrastructure; and it also helped us, the scientists, to regain some of our gradually lost dignity while interacting with computers : Warren just wanted us to use his application, not the opposite.
We'll obviously try to keep-up all those fights, but we've lost one of our most respected and talented leader.
Reading all these words just confirms what we all know: the generosity of Warren's work. Our Structural Biology community is privileged to continue to benefit from his legacy. It is an honor indeed. We deeply regret that his family and friends can no longer benefit from his presence. May these testimonials comfort you in such a difficult moment. Your brother was a generous man. AL
I did not know Dr DeLano personally but did correspond with him by e-mail a couple of times.
I am to this present day overawed by both his scientific and computer programming achievements. The sheer beauty of his work is reflected by the sheer aesthetic power of PyMol. This unique molecular aesthetic has created new levels of perception for imagining the functional beauty of nature.
Dr DeLano's advocacy for open-source software, besides leaving a lasting impression on me, also created an important ethical and philosophical dimension to his work. We have lost not only a great scientist but also a wonderful human being.
To the DeLano family, my deepest sympathies are with you at this difficult time. God bless.
It was only a couple of weeks ago we had Warren presenting on new PyMol developments at our eCheminfo community of practice program at Bryn Mawr: http://echeminfo.com/COMTY_conf09delanow
What a shock and sadness to see this news in my email box today. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.
As a scientific community let's make sure that Warren's work continues and is built upon. He created something useful for others to benefit from, and the Open Source model allows that to continue!
Barry Hardy Founder & Director eCheminfo Community of Practice Douglas Connect, Switzerland
I knew Warren in high school, he was kind, generous, and supportive. He was a good listener, and brightened many a day with a smile and often something funny to say. Our nickname for each other was "bucko" for some reason, I don't remember when we started doing that. The dashboard pizza is one that I don't remember, but there you go, he's still making me smile. Jen, your story of George the ghost is so touching.
Given Warren's personality and intelligence I am not surprised to head of his immense contributions to the scientific community and the outpouring of support here.
What a tragic loss, my heartfelt condolences to out to Warren's family and friends.
I'm quite saddened to hear of Warren's passing. People in my lab were very active users of his PyMOL program. It was one of the best programs for visualizing molecules and was a great help to our research.
I am so sad to read about Warren's death. I remember him from high school. I had just moved to Palo Alto and Warren was one of my first friends at Gunn. He went out of his way to make me feel welcome when I felt like an outsider. Given how smart and creative that he was, I am not surprised to read about his scientific accomplishments. My condolences to his family.
The scientific community has lost a terrific scientist who made a major impact on the visualization of protein structures, through his program pymol. He pored enormous energy into its development, yet always made time to answer every email personally. As a fellow scientists and as his former colleague from the Wells Laboratory, I feel saddened to lose his brilliance and energy.
As his friend, I'm simply devastated by this news. He was a mensch and an all-around great friend.
To Beth and his family: my heart goes out to you for your loss. I'm so sorry.
I was deeply saddened to learn the news. Warren has made a wonderful contribution to the scientific community through the development of PyMol and has left a tremendous legacy. His death is a loss to us all.
I have interacted with Warren through e-mail and met him once at an ACS meeting. He has always been amazingly helpful and simply fun to e-talk with. I will miss him.
My first substantial programming project was a plugin for PyMOL which I demoed for Warren several weeks ago. In half an hour, his assistance led to a ten-fold improvement in speed and efficiency. Only with Warren's aid, and the fantastic work that is PyMOL, have I been able to contribute anything useful to science.
My sencerest condolences to the family and loved ones. It is difficult to grasp that Warren is no longer amongst us. I never met him, but we use PyMOL in the lab very, very frequently. It is wonderful how Warren made look tiny things really great.
All of us at Bioinformatics.Org offer our condolences, and our thoughts are with his family at this time.
Warren spoke at our 2002 annual meeting in Tucson, Arizona, even though we were still just a young group of grad students running a site without funds or big-name backing. Here's a photo of Warren from that day:
Warren was a genius. We played pool together in high school and hung out talking about how to change the world. Warren did it.
Had I ended up living in Palo Alto instead of Illinois I know we would have hung out all the time. Maybe I might even have eventually WON a game of pool or two.
I knew Warren in high school and to me he was an early example of someone who was both analytical and artistic. I have two specific memories to share.
I remember an occasion in the computer lab writing a software assignment to automatically calculate bowling scores given a sequence of pins knocked down -- such was my programming sophistication at the time. Warren was a few computers over and testing his 3-planetary-body graphical visualizer -- such was his programming sophistication at the time.
During high school Warren was also well known as a musician. I remember his band entered a school talent show and during one of the songs he donned a keytar and rocked out. Hilarious.
Warren was bright, creative, and friendly. I feel sad about his sudden loss.
I’m deeply saddened by the loss of one of the most brilliant people I’ve known, and my heart goes out to Beth and the rest of his family.
Of a long list of Warren’s examples of incredible ability that I can remember, the first was at a Wells lab group meeting at Genentech shortly after Warren joined the group as a new grad student. We were “phaging” like crazy back then and Warren, on his own initiative, developed a mathematical model relating phage ELISA data to the actual binding affinities of displayed ligands, which he had put together in one all-nighter. Equations derived in Mathematica, thermodynamics, simulations…It was so deep, insightful, well-organized, and beyond any expectations, that all of us in the room were just looking at each other in disbelief. We were laughing, like a “you just blew my mind” type of laugh. Some of us had our first taste of Warren’s genius.
On a more personal note I will always remember the hugely fun time we would in the Sunesis early days after Friday happy hours playing multiplayer strategy games like Age of Empires. As you might guess, Warren was a fearsome opponent. We were rivals that were always pitted on opposite teams. Unfortunately that meant I rarely got to see him at the keyboard during a match, but I’m told it could be pretty spectacular and entertaining to watch. Anyhow it was fun in its purest form.
Thank you Warren for your inspiration and the great memories.
It was always a pleasure to interact with Warren. In helping me he was always cheerful and courteous, even when some of my questions were simple or lame. We had a particularly fun exchange over implementing anaglyph stereo into PyMol in which he came back to me with a bunch of beautiful 3D images and the following e-mail.
James,
It works (see attached). Gee, had I known it would be that easy, I'd have added this years ago!
Driving home after hearing the news of Warren's passing, I realized that besides working with Warren at Sunesis for 6+ years, Warren and I had also gone to high school together. In fact, in 1989, a group of us had gone to prom together, and Warren and I were in the same group photo of 5-6 couples. We were all lined up in a cheesy 80's-style pose, all of us looking pretty generic with the girls in our off the rack prom dresses and the guys in their black tuxes...except for Warren. Positioned smack in the middle of the photo, was Warren in a WHITE tux, grinning the way we all have come to remember him. My condolences to his family.
I was deeply affected by this sad and unexpected news. Although I never met Warren, I felt like I knew him because I use his program Pymol daily. His energy, vision and generosity were evident in his contributions to the science community. My sincere condolences to his family. Jenny Martin, University of Queensland, Australia
The news has come to me as a shock. I met Warren recently at a conference and cant belive something can happen to him suddently. My sincere condolence to his family. Thanks Warren for providing us with such a wonderful tool. I will always remember the time we spent and the conversation we had over the dinner table.
I have followed Warren's path in many ways since arriving at UCSF from Princeton in 1996 and it is with great sadness that I now face a future without his reliable guidance and inspiration.
In my first year at UCSF, I did one of my rotations at Genentech to work more closely with both Warren and his advisor, Jim Wells. Warren inspired several of my own graduate research directions in molecular structure and recognition and was always generous with his time in discussing our shared fascination with how proteins interact.
Warren's wedding to Beth, his girlfriend from college at Yale, was not only a fun-filled event in celebration of their love, but also an inspiring day for me and Christina, my college girlfriend from Princeton, who several years later became my wife.
Warren was also a founding scientist at Sunesis, which was my first investment as a biotech venture capitalist.
During my four years at UCSF and the past nine investing professionally in science and technology companies, many of my most memorable conversations about science, biotechnology, business, entrepreneurship, and life were with Warren, most often over lunch in SF, South City, or Palo Alto.
The most recent of those lunches was just a month ago at Vero in Palo Alto, where we sat outside on a beautiful California day and talked for two hours about our similar paths as self-employed entrepreneurs in very different businesses, the future of both molecular modeling software and biotechnology investing, and his huge enthusiasm to have his wife, Beth, join him at DeLano Scientific full time after years of her practicing law.
While I now feel a great sense of personal loss knowing this was the last lunch I will have with Warren, I know that it is far more challenging for his beloved Beth and his family, to whom I extend my condolences.
In this time of grief, I focus on the hugely positive impact Warren had as a scientist, an entrepreneur, a son, a sibling, a husband, a dear friend to so many of us. Warren's PyMol has transformed the visualization of molecular structures and expanded the horizons of thousands of scientists around the world, many of whose kind words are alongside my own here. Warren's research in the field of molecular recognition was some of the most thorough and insightful of his time. He had a loving and supportive family and a wonderful wife. Most people would be lucky to achieve a tiny fraction of Warren's myriad successes in a lifetime and I feel lucky to have known Warren for much of his.
We will miss you Warren. Thank you for all your advice and for living your life in a way that was worth emulating.
Words cannot express my overwhelming shock and sadness. Warren and I talked a few weeks ago and we were supposed to meet for coffee this coming week…
Warren and I started graduate school at UCSF at the same time. For a decade and a half, we have known each other as classmates, fellow structural biologists, and good friends. Warren was truly an exceptional human being: brilliant, honest, kind, conscientious, gentle, loyal, generous, and goofy.
In the first couple of years, we used to take classes together. For amusement, he would spell out the word “SHELLOIL” on his calculator.
He was an advocate for Internet security before most people were aware of the concept of “identity theft.” Around that time, I was managing the computers for my lab, but didn’t take his suggestion seriously. To prove that I needed to pay more attention to data security, one day, while I was online, Warren hacked into my computer, created a file on my system, and then pinged me, all within minutes if not seconds. It suffices to say that I was fully convinced immediately afterwards and set the security level on all our computers to the highest.
Being who he was – a person who never hesitated to share his knowledge and insight, Warren also wrote an article that was published in the UCSF Synapse newspaper, suggesting that UCSF should put more emphasis on computer security. Of course, to prove his point to the school, he also hacked into the Registrar’s office. I didn’t follow what happened next, but I was pretty sure that the school was quite convinced as well.
Warren joined Dr. Wells’ lab in Genentech after our first year. He’d only occasionally visit UCSF, but he would always stop by to say hi and sometimes we would have coffee/tea together. On one occasion, he mentioned that he just picked up a new language: Python. It was around that time that he started his work on PyMOL. In his modest and un-assuming way, he only said he started a little simple project in Python. But, to many of us structural biologists, PyMOL is the amazing and wonderful tool that has changed, literally, the “faces” of so many scientific publications. And he did this almost single-handedly, while working at Sunesis.
Besides being the genius and mastermind behind PyMOL, Warren was one of the kindest and most gentle souls I’ve ever known. I remember the first time when I visited his office in South San Francisco. One wall of the office was decorated with beautiful cover illustrations of macromolecules rendered in PyMOL. He was particularly proud of a small 4x6 picture he received from an elementary teacher in Vietnam, which showed a group of young children looking at protein molecules through PyMOL in their science class. To this date, I can still remember the genuine satisfaction that shined through his bright smile – his trademark broad grin.
During one of our conversations, Warren told me about a bummer sticker he once saw: “small minds talk about people; average minds talk about things; great minds talk about ideas.” Warren loved talking about ideas. He appreciated and respected perspectives of all angles. He carried out his ideas to the fullest extent possible. I think the best way to celebrate Warren’s life is to be as he was: be true to our own ideas and live up to our potentials.
To Warren: Thank you for what you have done for us and for many heart-warming memories. You will be dearly missed.
To Beth, Jen and his family: I am SO SO sorry for your loss. I can only imagine the sadness and pain you are going through. My most sincere condolences.
Warren was a wonderful high school classmate and a kind friend. It was a pleasure to catch up with him from time to time over the years. I was stunned and so sorry to hear this terrible and unexpected news.
I was shocked and deeply saddened to learn the news of Warren's passing this week, and I want to convey my deepest sympathies to his family. I had the pleasure to know Warren for several years; we first met while I was a grad student at UCSF, and I vividly emember the enthusiasm and good cheer he brought into any converation, scientific or otherwise. I especially remember his optimism and excitement regarding his science. I remember this one time Warren and I crossed paths in an airport - we were each heading in opposite directions to make our connecting flights, and by chance we noticed each other and got to chatting. Before too long, Warren was excitedly recounting the state of PyMol developement, and the new developments with Delano Scientific. By the time he realized they were boarding his plane, he had to take off in a run. I've always admired the passion and enthusiasm that he brought to his science and to his life. I'll miss you Warren.
I remember Warren's going-away party at Sunesis. (He was leaving to work on PyMol full time). There were several gifts that were presented to him by Andrew Braisted, another founding scientist of Sunesis. Each present had a story behind it. One in particular was most amusing to me. Andrew handed Warren a box. Warren opened it to find a pair of white tennis shoes. As he was inspecting them with a puzzled look, Andrew stated, "These shoes have non-marking soles so that you don't mark up the floors of your new office." (You could always tell which path Warren took in the Sunesis building because there was a trail of black streaks from his shoes. ) Warren replied, "They are the wrong size." Everyone just started laughing.
Andrew died of a heart attack in September 2003 at the age of 39. Not too long after Warren's going away party.
Today, I was thinking that Andrew and Warren are out there somewhere catching up with each other, joking around, and talking science. This is giving me a sense of peace.
I am very saddened to learn this news. Warren and I were classmates at UCSF. Along with members of the faculty, Warren stood out as a role model of a scholar. He exuded an aura of commitment and capability. I think he had the ability to elevate the level of discussion in a room just by his presence. Knowing that he was conducting his PhD research in an industrial lab was a strong validation of the choice that I was considering at the same time. I knew that if Warren was pursuing this path, it must be a wise choice.
Foremost among the reasons that I cherish my job is that it allows me to spend time with brilliant people and extraordinary personalities. Warren embodied all of that and more. I will really miss him.
Warren would walk so fast around the halls of Sunesis. I think many of us found ourselves nearly jogging along with him as he charged around, leaving a track of black scuff marks behind.
As a naive young chemist starting her first job, I knew Warren as the super smart guy who made this imaging program for us at Sunesis. Took me a while to realize that it wasn't just for us, it was a scientific leap forward that he spread to the whole world. He was just such a humble, non-assuming guy, always happy to help with the smallest problem. I feel honored to have been able to know and work with Warren. My sincerest condolences to Jen, Beth, and his whole family. Warren will be sorely missed. -Emily
I supposed something was wrong the other day when Warren didn't reply to yet-another-pymol-question in his typically timely fashion. His early departure is shocking, saddening, and everything else that's been expressed in the other posts.
I share the sentiment that Warren is awesome and I deeply hope that his work for the scientific visuaization community and what he stands for will continue to live on and thrive.
I ran into Warren in Palo Alto last year around this time at a festival, after not seeing him in many, many years. I wasn't sure it was him, but later he found me on Facebook and we had a nice chat about growing up in PA and life in Silicon Valley. My heart goes out to Warren's family and close friends. He was such a nice guy and I am extremely saddened by this terrible news.
I'm as dumbfounded as everyone else by the news of Warren's passing. As seems to be the case with so many other folks, I only ever 'e-met' Warren, chiefly via the PyMOL mailing list. Features of someone's personality often don't come through in those types of exchanges, but this was refreshingly not the case with Warren; beyond his expertise in all things PyMOL, I was most often impressed by his selfless willingness to help others and, in a similar vein, his pleasant and occasionally lighthearted attitude. A memory of the latter dates back several years, when I began digging into PyMOL in order to hack-in a MOLMOL-like 'sausage' representation (possible because of Warren's open source vision!). We had a back-n-forth regarding what to call the new rep, the following being Warren's playful stream-of-consciousness that led to 'putty':
"Hmm...can we use a different name than saus? Sausage already has a meaning in PyMOL: sphere-capped cylinders. To me it looks like something you squeeze out of a tube...toothpaste, glue, grout, caulking, putty, or frosting. What do other software packages call this representation? Paste, grout, and putty are nice and short..."
The other recurring theme that stands-out most in my memory is Warren's legendary helpfulness: I'd wager that every PyMOL user has probably never deleted an email from him, as these typically contained gems of PyMOL wisdom. I remember thinking after one of Warren's lengthier posts that, in the spirit of the H-index used to quantify scientific publication impact, there ought to be a 'D-factor' defined as the average number of useful notes from some particular person which get saved-away for future reference!
To say nothing of the tragic loss to his own family & friends, Warren's passing is a profound loss to the open source, molecular graphics, and structural biology communities.
Though I hadn't been in touch with Warren for several years, I felt such a loss and my heart sunk when I heard of his death. I got to know Warren through Andrew and while I worked at Sunesis. He was one of those people w/ whom any period of time could elapse and you could always pick up where you left off. A couple years after Andrew died, I moved into a new place and had to set up my computer. I was at a complete loss. I hadn't talked to Warren for a long time, but called anyway to see if he could help me out. He came over that same day. We had a great time hanging out and catching up.
Warren was such a good soul and his absence is such a profound loss.
To Beth and family: be strong. You will make it.
Rest in peace, Warren... and say hi to Andrew. Joelle
What I liked about Warren was that while he was a great scientist (and the many email above a such a testament to that), he was also interested in so much else in the world. I am not a scientists and one day at a wedding, I started chatting with him about Japanese manga and anime, and he seemed as interested in that as in the latest science. We will miss you Warren--actually we already do.
I'm vary sad about Warren's passing.Although I only met Warren with e-mail via the pymol mailing list, I was impressed by his selfless willingness to help others,lighthearted idea etc.Miss you Warren...
Two memories of Warren have been running through my mind for the past few days. During my interview at Sunesis Warren was assigned to take me to lunch. In those days Sunesis seemed to have a doubling time of about a month, so they interviewed candidates literally on a daily basis. We had a great lunch. Near the end Warren described the huge numbers of interviews and said "There are so many (candidates consuming our time with interviews) that we automatically hate them all until they give us some reason not to." I loved his candor. Somehow this unexpected disclosure really made me feel welcomed.
Not long after starting at Sunesis, Warren and I were both working late one Thursday night. I was running an assay, but didn't want to miss Friends, so I set up the monitor in the boardroom as a large-screen TV. The picture was grainy and the sound static-laden. Warren came to investigate the noise, determined in a glance that he could improve the clarity and went to work making Friends viewable. I'm pretty sure that Warren couldn't have cared less about Friends, but was his typical generous self, willing to help me achieve my goal, insignificant as it was. Once we had the TV set up, we both spent the "Friends" time in the conference room, but ran back – me to the lab and Warren to his office - during the commercials. I think all I accomplished during the commercials was to develop a western blot. Warren probably solved several differential equations and implemented the sculpting commands in PyMol during the same break. Thinking of the science-punctuated Friends episode and sharing it with Warren makes me smile.
I am profoundly sad to know Warren is gone. I have taught hundreds of students to use PyMol and have seen the way it has impacted their science. He did with the world what my dad always advocated we do with campsites – he left it better than he found it. I wish he could read this page full of testimonials to reaffirm how deeply his work is appreciated by a huge community. He will be sorely missed.
I am shocked and saddened by Warren’s death. When PyMOL appeared in the world of structural biology, the job of explaining the key details of a complicated structure suddenly became much easier because we can quickly make clear and beautiful pictures. PyMOL is a wonderful communication tool that lets us focus on structure and biology and (almost) forget about computing. For years, it has been an essential tool for my research group – thanks to luscious molecular pictures, free availability, and Warren’s constant updates and improvements.
Tonight as I prepare a teaching lab on PyMOL for chemical biologists, I remember Warren and wonder how much more he might have contributed...
In science one has to ultimately sell our story to our audience (be they companies, colleagues, students, lay people or government). What Warren did was transform our ability to present our results. Before Warren, programs existed loved by experts but challenges to novices. PYMOL is a program anyone can use not only to show structures but to learn about them. The genius is the simplicity of PYMOL to use (which required the extraordinary talent of Warren to make). The ubiquitous nature of protein structure pictures is testament to what he achieved. His work inspired in the very best way competition and emulation.
I am so very sorry about this tragic and far too early death. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family. I hope they can take some scrap of comfort by knowing that Warren's accomplishments are admired and remembered by the structural biology community.
I was pointed to PyMol when I was starting my postdoc. Warren helped me out several times when I couldn't figure things out, making it do things that it wasn't (strictly speaking) supposed to do! When I had him show me things, I had to have him slow down because he just zipped through things so fast!
Even now, it's the program I use for showing people what molecules look like.
I met Warren in high school. He was wondrously unconcerned about the things that consumed most teenagers – fashion, social status, having the right friends, whatever. He was phenomenally talented, and would always surprise me with some hidden skill that I never knew he had.
He composed music, he wrote a 3-d ray tracer on his freaking *calculator*, he aced every single AP bio test, he tapped into the wiring in his college dorm so he could steal internet (back in the days before everyone got internet in their dorms).
But beyond his talent, he was humble about it all. He never bragged, just shared. Warren was the easiest friend ever. Even though we’d sometimes not talk to one another for years, I always felt like we could just pick up where we left off at any time.
No exaggeration – every few months I’d daydream that I’d eventually move back to Palo Alto and we’d be able to hang out, do stuff. Maybe I’d be able to tear him away from that PyMol thingy and we’d make a game together.
Pymol made structures accessible to students and non-specialists in a way that no other software has. Using Pymol, I finally felt that I could teach undergraduates how to learn from structures themselves instead of just showing them premade pictures. Warren's educational legacy will be immense.
As a grad student at UCSF who attended lectures by Warren and then used his software, I am deeply saddened by the loss of such a valuable contributor to the biomedical research community. I am confident, however, that his mark is here to stay.
I don't have time to read all of the comments (so many!), but I'm one of many thousands of PyMol users who interacted with Warren briefly, but even thorough that small window, could perceive what a wonderful person he was.
Something that I hope you will take some comfort from is the fact that Warren made a contribution that was not only valuable to researchers in structural biology, but throughout the biological sciences, in that it provided a *free* method of visualizing what is becoming one of the most important facets of molecular biology.
I teach introductory biochemistry at a Canadian University, and Warren's free software makes it easy for me and my students to engage with and simply play with the wealth of what is known about the structures of proteins. His contribution to both basic science and the education of scientists will persist long into the future. Indeed, I sincerely (and, admittedly somewhat selfishly) hope his legacy will continue to be developed. From what little I knew of Warren, I think that is what he would have wanted.
I got the chance to visit Warren in his office when starting PyMol and compare entrepreneurial notes. He was an inspiration. There was a lot heart in his work. He put his spirit into his work.
Warren was the year behind me at UCSF. He was over several times to play bridge at my house, critical since bridge requires exactly four people to play. The last time I saw him was a year or two ago; it was a Sudnay morning in a Starbucks in Foster City, and he was returning his U-Haul as he was in the process of moving to Palo Alto. It was nice catching up.
It was saddening to find out someone you knew personally, liked, and admired passed away.
Something I haven't seen here at all- Warren was the winner of the Clements prize for the best Ph.D thesis in the basic sciences at UCSF. Success never got into Warren's head, and the ideas never stopped coming out of it. He was a great friend, and a great asset to science and to humankind.
I knew Warren both at Yale and at UCSF. We overlapped briefly in Axel Brunger's lab where we were both undergraduates. I believe I was two years ahead of him, but we were pretty much the only undergraduates working in Axel's lab, which was about seven people on NeXT computers at the time. And we were then both graduate students in the biophysics group at UCSF. It was clear how brilliant and warm he was the day I first met him in Axel's lab.
The news is terribly shocking and upsetting. While I never got to know Warren that well, I feel the overlap of our early scientific and educational careers very strongly. And seeing the long list of colleagues and friends, admirers and acquaintances, is incredibly moving. It is nice to see some familiar names, who I haven't seen in many years, writing about Warren.
I manage a the Bio-Computing Teaching Lab at Harvard University. Shortly before I was made aware of PyMOL, our faculty and staff use a number of tools to teach macro molecular data structures manipulation. Frankly, there were too many. It was inefficient to deal with lab manuals for over 10 different programs which would essentially do similar visualization tricks. Not quite.
I met Warren in January 2004 at his office in South San Francisco, when his office was staffed with one employee (him) to discuss a potential integration of PyMOL into our lab operation. Warren and I were very enthusiastic with the prospect, but I was concerned our faculty would not want to "rely on one vendor". So I asked Warren, why don't you help me lead a workshop at Harvard? I knew that there was no one better for demonstrating to the value of PyMol.
After he arranged several meetings in the east coast to visit Pharma companies, he made an accommodation to visit Harvard and lead the workshop. Our faculty and staff were very pleased--and impressed I may add--our TFs loved the potential solution. But it was Warren's personal touch what made the entire project success. After the workshop, we had lunch at the Faculty Club, where he was very comfortable talking and explaining the capabilities of PyMol to just about anyone who would approach him. I saw him last time on May 2009 and briefly discussed another visit to our Bio-Teaching Labs. When I learned we had passed away, I felt so sad he will not visit us physically this year, yet I feel very happy and blessed that I had the opportunity to meet him and and deal with him personally. At a lunch meeting in 2004, I learned how much he loved living in the bay area. I also learned his wife was instrumental with the legal aspect of his business. He also told me his family and many friends were very supportive during the incipient stage of Delano Scientific. I know Warren will be sorely missed.
My most sincere sympathies to his wife, and his entire family and friends.
I never met Warren, but I wanted to add to the many voices thanking him for contributing PyMol to the scientific community. PyMol made crystal structures (and thinking in terms of structure) more accessible to us non-crystallographers everywhere. It may seem like a small thing, but having powerful yet easy-to-use software certainly helped me see things in a new light several times, and I'm sure that's true for many others. I hope that legacy of enabling scientists' imaginations will bring an eventual measure of comfort to Warren's loved ones and friends. My condolences to them.
I met Warren in 2001; he came to make a demo of this software to our lab and to install it on our computers for general use. I initially thought about taking notes of the install procedure only to realize how hopeless it would be trying to catch up .... (thanks to bash history I was able to see what had happened).
I remember thinking at the time how courageous of this guy to drop his job and enter this uncertain business of developing opensource software. I'm glad he did what he did, he set a precedent to look at, something to encourage developers and scientists to come, and he left us with a magnificent piece of open software which the community has the opportunity to pick up and carry on.
The last time I saw Warren was at a barbecue at his house which he organized for those early contributors/beta testers of PyMOL. What a generous guy. Thank you Warren's parents for raising such a great person.
As I read messages left by Warren’s friends and colleagues, I was awe struck by the magnitude of his technological impact worldwide. As a former Sunite, I had the pleasure of knowing Warren: I remember the errant lock of hair, the fingers that raced over the keyboard, and the knee that kept pace with his thoughts. Warren was a “regular fellow” who just happened to be a super smart geeky scientist. A few PyMOL-created pieces of art were framed and hung on walls at our brand new South San Francisco facility. To the entire DeLano family and to the friends Warren left behind…may your enormous grief quickly subside and be replaced by warm memories and gentle laughter. Charin G
I only met Warren once but have used his software and admired him as a scientist and entrepreneur for a long time. The kind words here make me wish I knew him better. He truly made a difference in his pioneering work. Here is my blog post dedicated to him:
On behalf of the Regional Student Group of Eastern Africa, i would like to express our condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Warren. It is such a great loss to the scientific community. His contributions to the field will be remembered. I have personally used PyMOL in my work.
Warren visited Daylight in Santa Fe in about 2000. He was at Sunesis but working hard on PyMol which was already great. His incredible talents were accompanied by a rare kind of humility which was evident then as he paid homage to Dave Weininger and Roger Sayle and their work. Thank you Warren for your great contributions.
I'm truly shocked... I have met Warren several times at different meetings and when he visited our office a couple of years back. Each time he struck me as a well balanced, very nice, and always positive kind of guy. Last time I've met him at a small chemistry conference (October 12-16, 2009, Bryn Mawr, PA) - just 2.5 weeks before his sudden death. We had a little chat in between sessions; he complained about being "stressed out recently"...
My 'unplugged' nature delayed (by 10d) the learning of such impressive and sad piece of news. My moved condolences towards all his clique.
I was lucky enough to meet Warren at an EMBO course on biomolecular simulation, held at Pasteur Institute in Paris (Jul 2004). A tiny anecdote comes to mind.
Fond on gnu/linux --fundamentalist at the time--, I joked about a commercial OS installed on his 'travelling laptop'. He instantly quenched his smile and replied seriously: "You know, I really miss my office when abroad, where one enjoys constantly moving around computers, operating systems, hardware combinations, and so on." After pausing, he laughed and added: "Yet such fun may well be the very Hell sometimes!!"
His willingness to solve people's problems, with beauty and rigor, was simply awesome. With PyMol, one felt something big was coming; like a big leap in the way we travel through biological macromolecules. And so it was, as the rest is pure evidence.
After a 20 minute debut presentation that I gave many years ago, Warren, whom I have never met, had very nice things to say, as well as extremely insightful comments. I was immediately impressed both by his friendliness and the fulness of his understanding. We have lost a leading light in molecular science, but I hope his influence lives on.
Preston MacDougall Middle Tennessee State University
I met Warren this year at the SBGrid meeting in Boston, it was wonderful talking to him after numerous conversations on the PyMol mailing list. I was highly impressed with how well he anticipated the needs of PyMol users and for almost any request he usually had something in the works or an elegant solution to their problem... He was a wonderful speaker and a very generous and helpful human being...He will be sorely missed by all who met him or knew him through his work. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Shivender Shandilya U. Mass. Med. School, Worcester.
I,Jitendra Narayan,along with my BioinformaticsOnline(BOL)team,deeply saddened by the loss of such a valuable contributor to the biomedical research community. I am confident, however, that his mark is here to stay.
I met Warren during his visit to Harvard a few years ago (see Pepe Lopez's post above). His energy and enthusiasm was contagious! I had used PyMOL only sparsely before then, but have been a convert since. As others pointed out, PyMOL is an outstanding teaching tool; at Harvard it is used in multiple undergraduate courses. Not only can teachers use it to easily make high-quality presentations, it is also simple enough that students can readily learn how to use it and explore structures on their own. And that's something Warren cared about and facilitated immensely: making the wonders of macromolecular structures widely accessible to non-structural biologists.
My sincere condolences to Warren's family and friends.
I'm a high-school classmate who only knew Warren tangentially. I remember he used to blush! It was pretty cute.
It's so sad to hear that Warren has died, so hard for the family & friends he leaves behind. And bittersweet to hear he contributed so much to science, because no doubt he had much more to give.
I guess we can only grieve now and be grateful we had him as long as we did.
When Warren came to NIH with a team from Apple's scientific group to demonstrate PyMOL, he took extra time to visit with me and another researcher in our lab to show us some special settings allowing us to use PyMOL more effectively.
He enthusiastically shared his knowledge and was genuinely interested in helping us make PyMOL work for us.
At the time I was interested in some advanced shading with the PyMOL renderer. He advised me to try:
set antialias, 2; set direct, 0; set light_count, 10; set ray_shadow_decay_factor, 0.3; set reflect, 1.3; set specular, 0
Later, he generously negotiated licensing terms with our group. Although PyMOL seemed to be his source of income, he seemed more interested in helping us use it than in extracting every last dime.
I never met Warren in person but I communicated with him via E-mail discussing new features of the MacPymol software and his kindness and generosity was felt through the ether. I will always remember him fondly and I miss him.
I first used pymol in 2004..And I have used it uptill now! Warren did more in his short time on earth!!
It is not how long you stay on the earth but how much you contribute to humanity!! Warren has given back to mankind brilliantly and excellently!! His name will live forever! WE will miss him..His inspiration will live unceasingly!
I'm stunned to have just learned of Warren's sudden passing. We worked closely together while I was a post doc and he was finishing his Ph.D. at Genentech. Warren was without question one of the most gifted yet humble scientists I've known. He was always there to offer encouragement and help and I, along with the rest of you, will miss him dearly.
Warren was a great guy. Those who met him liked him. He was super bright. I first met Warren back in the Sunesis days... and we stayed in touch as he went independent. His passing is a huge loss. He was so full of innovation and ideas, many of which he put into practice. He was a big supporter of our efforts here at PubChem and open source in general. I am not sure what more to say other than that I will miss him.
Special thanks to Warren’s sister for setting this site up to allow us to express ourselves.
Warren was my nephew so I knew him from his childhood. What I find so baffling is that Warren's sunny personality seemed so constant over his entire life. I never once sensed any depression or anxiety; to the contrary, he always had a twinkle in his eye and a relaxed disposition. What a loss to his family, friends and to the world.
I just can't believe it... He was of my age... I just can't believe it...
I never met him, but my first email exchange with him dated back to March 2002. I proposed him to be a beta tester for the prerelease of PyMOL for MacOS X. Since then, we had regular contacts. He was so enthusiastic, so generous, so smart...
I was so proud to watch PyMOL growing in the community. I'll have a thought for Warren each time I launch PyMOL. And believe me, that is many times a day!
I met Warren at an ACS meeting PyMol booth, and just a few weeks ago he was here at GSK teaching us about advanced features of PyMol. He touched my life and career through those brief moments and through PyMol, which I've used extensively as a medium to output and share my research, and consider one of the most robust, user-friendly and pretty molecular modeling software available for any price. I remember him as a warm, friendly, helpful, and extremely knowledgable individual (he gave me a 2-page cheat sheet of PyMol commands that he dismissively referred to as a "brain dump" but is actually quite well organized).
My thoughts and prayers go out to all who were closest to him and his family. Warren was taken from us before his time, but his candle burned brightly and illuminated the entire life science community. We will miss him, and should honor and further his contributions to science.
General and I had the rare opportunity to spend a week with Beth and Warren on their honeymoon. It was not planned but our daughter, Stephanie, attended their wedding and found out at the reception that they were headed off to Hawaii the next day. We were also going to Hawaii. When we met in Hawaii, Warren and Beth came to our roon and Warren said "sign us up for all the fun stuff". We had dinner several times but the most memorable time together was a Sunset Cruise. We were taking a tour bus from the docks back to the hotel late at night. During the bus ride, Warren and Bill emgaged in a loud and intense discussion about the relative merits of using battle elephants in some internet game they had been playing. We were sitting in the back of the bus laughing but we got many angry looks from the other passengers who were wondering why we weren't keeping our loud and laughing children quiet so they could sleep. Our next trip to Hawaii was planned and we all met for another week of fun, They rented a beautiful home. Warren was playful and caring and we had another fun week. We only saw him once after that trip. We had no idea what a brilliant, generous scientist he was. We only knew his as Warren and had fun playing together in Hawaii. As we read all the messages, we were taken aback and really should not have been surprised that he gave so generously to the scientific community. We knew one of his goals was to teach all he knew to all who would listen. His contributions to the world will be remembered forever. There are pictures of our second trip on web site. We love you Beth Norine & General
In a belated response to Mark's post, my dominant memory of Warren is also bridge games. In a group of competitive people, he was always calm. I remember him, stretched out on Mark's couch, in some wee hours of the morning almost asleep, waiting for the rubber to finish. He was a very special guy. It was always wonderful to run into him....
I never met or corresponded with Warren DeLano, but I've used PyMol everyday for the last 5 years of my life, and it is such a marvelous program. I am very saddened by the loss of this incredible man.
Although I didn't know Warren personally, I was impressed with his forever program "Pymol". I've used his program in my seminars and in classrooms and since 2 years ago I've watched development of the software. May his soul rest in peace. Commented here to show my condolences to his family and friends.
Wow, I just heard through my friend Tamer Nassar on Facebook that Warren has passed on - I'm greatly saddened by this. My condolences to you and the family!
I went to Gunn with Warren and he and I played in a band called Nemesis; we played a few functions at the high school. What many people may not know is that Warren was an amazing keyboardist and was very creative musically.
I always remember how kind he was and so trustworthy. He was always nice to everyone and was well liked. I remember our Saturday jams at Tamer's house on the weekend and still have a recording somewhere (I hope!) of these jams.
Life goes on, but we lose people along the way and Warren deserves acknowledgement for his wonderful effect on my life, and as I'm reading, many other lives as well.
Nathaniel Flick bassist, interaction designer Gunn Class of '88
It's cold and raining in San Diego, one of my home recording microphones had a major malfunction a little earlier...and I just got this terrible news, which eclipses all of the former. Condolences to the family and everyone represented here, and encouragement to celebrate his life now, though it may be difficult.
Like my brother Nathaniel (who commented above), I too was in the band Nemesis with Warren during our "internment" at Henry M. Gunn high school in the mid to late eighties. As with many erstwhile friends nowadays, I found a great satisfaction in reconnecting with him on Facebook a few months back.
It is not surprising, upon observing some of the other comments here, to see him innovating in his chosen field as much as I recollect him doing in music, as he had a highly inquisitive, energetic, pioneering spirit. He could've been a rock star. In fact, he could've done anything with his life and it would've been with the upmost elan. That he chose to serve mankind through science--and made major contributions, by the sound of it--makes me even prouder for having known him.
If the death of a friend is the question, coping is the answer. I hope all of you who knew Warren will find the strength to cope with this loss, preferrably through eachother. Remember him together; someday this initially melancholy act will transform into celebratory reminiscences of a great man, which, though I didn't know him repletely, I like to believe he was.
George; Warren was my boss for 4 years. My memory was at a party where 3 or 4 people were around him. He was carrying individual conversations with each of them. In real time. It was amazing to witness. My heart goes out.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.macresearch.org/memoriam-warren-l-delano
ReplyDeleteSecond story - I was next door to him, and noticed these black streaks on the floor in front of his office. There seemed to be a correlation with his shoes and these marks. He confirmed it by scuffing his heels dramatically about 15 times. And then helped clean up the marks.
ReplyDeleteWarren would always tease me about the resolution of my computer screen. He would wonder how I could read the text with the font so small.
ReplyDelete-leslie cruz
Speaking of shoes...
ReplyDeleteDo you remember the time Warren mistakenly came to work at Sunesis with 2 different shoes?
We shared an office briefly, our interior office had the cheaper windows with the metal lattice. Or did when the building was first built. Warren was really distraught about those windows, and felt like they belonged in a mental hospital, not an interior office in an office building. He and the other person changed out windows late one night. The other person was never revealed, though his office ended up with the metal lattice windows. And yes, it was pretty easy to figure out who the other one was.
ReplyDeleteAround the time I joined, he had been awarded a UCSF prize for best doctorate. He was so blase about it.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chemspider.com/blog/in-memoriam-warren-delano.html
ReplyDeletehttp://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2009/11/05/warren-delano/
Although I never met Warren in person,
ReplyDeletewe worked together extensively by email in the days when we were
bringing PyMOL to the Apple platform for the first time. These
experiences are among my cherished memories. Warren will obviously be
missed and remembered.
Regards,
Michael L. Love
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
Scientists all over the world are saddened by the loss of this bright young man - he really made a contribution to our world and the way we understand and visualize it.
ReplyDeleteI am one of those scientist that never meet Warren personally, but his kind assistant through email was of great assistance to me through the last few years. I can not help but feel the scientific world as well as the world at large is a lessor place without him.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we never met in person we had very quick email exchanges. He seemed to be tied to his computer - at least always when I asked for help.
ReplyDeletePymol is a great piece of software, which has become the defacto standard for scientific publications.
It's sad to hear he's gone, my condolences to Warren's family and friends.
I am shocked by the devastating news! I strongly feel that I, and literally all crystallographers who are active as of today, owe great credits to Dr. Delano for his invaluable contribution to the community. Warren is going to live in my heart forever. He surely has rested in peace and love, -yong
ReplyDeleteWarren has made a significant contribution to not just structural biology field, but also to many scientists who are interested in the art of structures. I have seen for many times, that scientists become enjoying of beautiful structures demonstrated by Pymol. Warren leaving is a big loss to the whole community. My condolences to his family and friends. And wish someone can push warren's work forward.
ReplyDeleteLike many others, I never had the chance to meet Warren and shake his hand, but I've spoken with him numerous times via e-mail. What always struck me was his thoughtful attention to all my comments and questions; Warren was truly a brilliant, friendly and helpful person. We are all the more fortunate to have known him and he will be missed. Our sincere condolences to his family.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
-Andy Torelli
All the people in our lab are deeply sorry, and we send our condolences to Warren's family.
ReplyDeleteI had the opportunity to meet Warren last year. I was in Stanford and emailed him asking about the PyMOL users meetings that were held years ago. He said that they had been discontinued, but invited me to visit his office and see the last features in PyMOL. Just like that. It was impressive to watch him working in several computers simultaneously, implementing features on-the-fly as I was asking for them. And his passion about keeping PyMOL as open software was truly inspiring.
It is really a sad day for science. We will sure miss him, and all the amazing work he could have done.
Warren, que descansis en pau.
I did have the opportunity to meet Warren once. I was impressed by his intelligence, enthusiasm, and openness to suggestions.
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of scientists of a certain type who are well known to the community, e.g. Axel Brunger, George Sheldrick, Alwyn Jones, Ton Spek, Gerard Kleywegt, Hendickson & Konnert, Dale Tronrund - I could go on...
In addition to doing outstanding science of their own, their efforts in developing and making software available to others has greatly magnified the productivity of the community. To them we should be most grateful.
Warren is certainly high on the list of such great scientists and people.
Bill Gleason - U Minnesota
I am quite shocked at the sudden death of Warren.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I had never met him in person, his emails on the various bulletin boards were part of my working life for quite a few years. Somehow I feel I have lost a friend and a pivotal reference point.
I have always been impressed by Warren's knowledge on computer graphics and by the wonderful tool he produced for the macromolecular community. Truly impressive stuff.
My deepest condolences to the family and friends,
Roberto - King's College London
@cwolfus - one of the shoes had buckles, and the other were lace up - he cited it being dark when he put his shoes on as to why they were different.
ReplyDeleteI am both shocked and saddened at the news of Warren's passing. I did not know Warren personally--only electronically through my interest in PyMOl--but I certainly regarded him as extraordinarily affable and helpful for someone so busy. It seems that no question, problem or suggestion was too small for him to address. His contribution to the structural biology community is inestimable. I am sure I am not the only member of the scientific community whose thoughts are with you in this difficult time.
ReplyDeleteMy brother tried to help me overcome my fear of the dark as a child. He told me that there was George, the friendly ghost, who lived in my closet. George would take care of me, protect me from the night time monsters.
ReplyDeleteIt worked. The monsters never got me.
Thank you Warren for such a beautiful glimpse at nature's nanoparticles. Also for all the help over the years via email. Just won't be the same.
ReplyDeleteOur thoughts are with Warren's family and those closest to him.
I am deeply saddened. My profound sympathies to Warren's family and friends. Warren's PyMol was a wonderful and powerful graphical display program for macromolecules. I used it many times for demonstrations of protein structures and to make beautiful pictures of proteins for publications.
ReplyDeleteWarren set an example of the highest standard in developing scientific tools and in supporting their application by any scientist who wished to use them.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that so many scientists, including myself, who have known him only via e-mail, feel so close to Warren speaks best for the person he was.
It is very unfortunate for the Structural and Computational Biology community to loose Warren, but his outstanding values will remain eternal.
This is truly a great loss - although I have never met Warren, I am a big fan of PyMol, using it for all my structural work. Thanks for that Warren; you will be missed.
ReplyDelete-Pavan
The structural biology community feels sometime like a large family with components spread throughout the world. Even if maybe we'll never meet each other personally, we exchange ideas and thoughts through e-mails on the various bulletin boards. Warren was not only a great contributor in terms of what he made with PyMOL (truly astonishing), but also with his promptness and will in trying to help people of the community with their problems. We'll be missing him day by day, as our 'family' has lost an important member...
ReplyDeleteSebastiano, European Institute of Oncology, Milan
What a tragic loss. There are only so many really great Open-Source scientific applications, and Warren managed to even combine it with a functional business.
ReplyDeletePymol was and continues to be one of the cornerstones of scientific visualization software in the Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux distributions, and is an integral part of the Debichem packaging effort for chemical and biochemical Open-Source software.
In the name of the Debichem team, my condolences go to his family. Warren will be dearly missed.
Michael
Warren's latest invoice for the yearly subscription we have with Pymol indicated as the "Bill to" organisation
ReplyDelete"C.N.R.S. (bonnes à payer)".
Now CNRS is the main science employer in France and "bonnes à payer" literally means "only good to pay". Either a very good sense of humour or a remarkable knowledge of the French system.
My condoleances to the family.
Did you ever see how neat he kept his defunct computer equipment? He had bookshelves with plastic bins, filled with ziplock bags (to reduce dust), in turn filled with bygone mice, serial connectors, old modems (1200 baud!), I think I even remember motherboards and such. This was in his San Carlos apartment. The cables were usually neatly looped and twist tied.
ReplyDeleteOver the years I have created thousands of illustration with PyMOL. Part of my career is build around his program. Warren has touched so many thru his development of PyMOL... the world will feel his loss for a long time. My deepest condolences to his wife and family.
ReplyDeleteAdam
I have used CNS and then Pymol every day for as long as I can remember, and certainly wouldn't be where I am today without them.
ReplyDeleteI never met Warren in person but somehow that does not matter. I guess that shows his profound impact ...
To Jen (Warren's brother) - I lost my (twin) brother in his thirties and time really does heal but life is always changed.
My thoughts are with you ...
When Warren was a first-year graduate student at UCSF, I was a postdoc. My advisor had Warren come talk with me about a project that was particularly challenging and resistant to solution. For a fleeting moment, I worried about the embarrassment I might feel if this 'kid', fresh out of college, solved my problem in mere minutes! Yeah, well, I got over that pronto, was glad for the help and learned a few things!
ReplyDeleteIn more recent years, interactions with Warren have centered around PyMol - whether asking questions and getting instant, patient and thorough answers, renewing my group's subscription to the software, or getting academic access for use in a course every year.
The memory that is most vivid - and all the more poingnant now - is an e-mail Warren sent when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor about a year ago. Here is part of that note from Warren:
"...I am so sorry to read your startling news. Not a one of us is excused from life-altering biology and random accidents, any of which can strike suddenly without warning. For that reason, we must never take anything for granted. Not a single day. Not a single friend. But as you well know, there are only two things we can do in defiance of chance, whether in sickness or in health: (1) Do everything you feel is important in life, today, or as soon as possible. (2) Never give up. Ignore the odds. Always believe you will survive and thrive....."
Upon reading that, I knew that 'kid' had matured into a wonderfully thoughtful, caring and empathetic man.
To Warren, I hope you are at peace and I hope you can feel the love and admiration from your friends, colleagues and family. You will be so incredibly missed - for who you were, not just for what you accomplished and gave us all.
To Warren's family and friends, my sincerest condolences are with you...and I wish you healing.
-Linda Brinen-Stout
I never met Warren. But earlier this year we chatted on the phone for an hour. His openness to talking, his encouragement, his humor and his honesty meant I left that call feeling connected and wanting to meet face to face with Warren when I had the opportunity. His contributions to the community are immense and will continue. His work has fans around the world and his spirit, passion to contribute and giveaways to our community will help to reflect who he was in life. I am saddened.
ReplyDeleteChemSpiderman
I did not know Warren, but I am like 1000s of others who used his software. I was always impressed by the committment to free access software and this has served as an inspiration in an otherwise very commercial world.
ReplyDeleteSorry to sister Jen for my previous mistake ...
ReplyDeleteI've known Warren as a colleague and friend for many years. Although we only met in person occasionally (mostly we corresponded via email), when we managed to meet in person at trade shows and conferences, we'd spend hours talking about science, computers, and especially the social and philosophical aspects of free software and community projects.
ReplyDeleteThe thing everyone noticed immediately about Warren was that he was both a brilliant scientists, and a genuinely nice guy. He was always friendly, loved to listen to ideas from his fellow scientists, and when he made his own contributions to the conversation, he showed true insight.
It's no exaggeration to say that Warren's work has been hugely important. Lives are being saved and made better, every day, around the world, as a direct result of Warren's work. Drug discovery is a hugely complex task, but it's simpler, better, and faster today because of PyMol. Warren's work will improve the lives of countless people, worldwide, for years and even decades to come.
Warren's life was far too short, but in a very real way, his life and work will carry on, making the world a better place for all of us, for a long, long time.
Rest in Peace, Warren.
I never met Warren in real-life, but we have met in several forums, eMails, and other next generation media.
ReplyDeleteI honestly think he was one of the most influential life science informatics persons in many ways, a scientific and natural leader.
He has paved a way for many of us. He will never be forgotten! Still, it is so sad, *short break*, if the internet would be a street, you could see us all forming a guard of honor on it.
Just about every time I spoke with Warren it gave me a huge lift. I felt so lucky to know him -- a brilliant and generous soul, filled with idealism and electric energy.
ReplyDeleteI met Warren this fall durng the Blue Obelisk dinner at the Fall 2009 national meeting of the American Chemical society in Washington DC and am truly shocked and lacking words to say. Even though I only met him this one time he left a long and lasting impression on me and I am just finding this hard to believe. We will all miss him.
ReplyDeleteI was so sorry to hear the news. Warren was a good friend during high school. Those were good times; Jen, back then you used to call me "Pear Head". :) I only saw him a couple of times in the years since, once when he visited me in Boston during college, and briefly at a reunion. I meant to re-connect again when I ran into a mutual friend, and I'll always regret that I let that slip by. My condolences.
ReplyDeleteI will dearly miss Warren - his dry wit and excellent sense of humor (and deep knowledge of course!) helped me overcome quite a few challenges in using Pymol for things it was never inteded to do (but did well, anyway).
ReplyDeleteMy deepest condolences to Warren's family and close friends.
I knew Warren since his graduate school days at UCSF. I have far too many memories to list, from lunches in the neighborhood around UCSF, to his bachelor party, to visits at his office and his garage filled with computers and hard drives... He was one of the nicest people I know, always cheerful and enthusiastic about every aspect of work, science and life. I'm typing this at beamline 8.3.1 at Berkeley's Advanced Light Source and in the iMac's tool bar is the now nearly ubiquitous PyMol icon, truly a lasting legacy from a remarkable individual. I will think of Warren often and always fondly.
ReplyDelete-Earl Rutenber
I've met and talked with Warren many times over the years over email, on the phone, and in person. He was always a friendly person, obviously bright, and highly motivated. I develop a molecular visualization tool called VMD, and early on when Warren was working on PyMol he called me up on the phone out of the blue and asked me whether I thought there was "room for another molecular visualization program" in the field despite the existence of the one I work on as well as many other good programs. I told him I thought that there would definitely be plenty of space for another good program and that he should definitely go ahead with his ambitions of making PyMol a serious long-term effort. Warren deftly navigated the ocean of existing scientific software, and made PyMol a unique, easy-to-use, and extremely popular tool within the scientific community. He did this through a tremendous amount of his own hard work and by cooperating with his own users, and even with "competitors" like me, by sharing and exchanging code, knowledge, and advice. I never had the opportunity to know Warren as a close friend, but he was the kind of creative, open, friendly, and honest person that everyone wants to have as a close friend. If more scientists and software developers followed Warren's example by collaborating and even competing in a more collegial and cooperative manner, the world would be a better place. Warren accomplished a lot and made a very positive impact on the scientific community, he'll be sorely missed.
ReplyDelete-- John Stone
Like so many others I am shocked by this event. Being only two years older, this comes very close. I know Warren from my period as head developer of Jmol, where we discussed how to improve portability of molecular scenes between the two open source visualization tools, and shared our passion for the open source ideology. His contributions to this fields are considerable and do not restrict itself to providing PyMOL but extend itself to the whole Open Source in science idea.
ReplyDeleteMy best wishes and condolences to the family!
i was struck by the news. many times i have asked a question of the pymol wiki and was sort of stunned that Warren would personally reply. i didn't know much aout him but was struck by his cheerful demeanor and willingness to help with even small problems.
ReplyDeletemy condolences go out to his family
zach cp
I met Warren over 10 years ago at a workshop at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We both reported on our respective software tools for molecular visualization and the connection was instantaneous. Warren offered to drive me back to San Francisco where I was staying so that we would have more time to talk after the workshop was over. I was struck by his enthusiasm combined with his eloquence, wit, and diplomacy. Warren has been a driving force in the development of open source molecular visualization tools and he will be sorely missed by many. My condolences to his family and to Warren: rest in peace
ReplyDelete-Michel Sanner
I first met Warren at Apple WWDC and we corresponded over the years. He always helpful and had the happy knack of explaining both the trivial and complex in an engaging style. He will be sorely missed.
ReplyDeleteI remember Warren from elementary school. He was a pretty nice guy, always great in math and science and someone friendly to hang out with. Being grade school...most of my memories with him revolve around handball games and the occasional interest into dungeons and dragrons. Am glad that I got to see him a couple of years ago, but am sad to hear that he has moved on. After reading his profile I didn't realize how much of a contribution he had made in the scientific community. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteI am still so shocked and saddened. My heartfelt condolences to his family.
ReplyDeleteWarren was so full of energy and enthusiasm, every time you met with him you came away motivated to get great work done.
I feel very lucky to have had the chance to work with Warren over the last few years. Such a genuine, friendly and incredibly talented individual. He will be sorely missed.
I, like many others, first met Warren via mailing lists. Literally from my first interaction with him, I was in awe of him. He was, among other things, one of the most brilliant, dedicated, kind, and motivated people that I've met. His constant desire and ability to contribute to his vision of open science was unparalleled.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most telling things is the sheer number of people who will tell you how helpful he was to them personally, as evidenced by the flurry of blog and mailing-list posts in the past several days.
He was an inspiration as both a scientist and as a person. I considered him both a friend and a hero.
He will be missed, but certainly not forgotten.
-Michael Lerner
I feel close to the family of Warren.
ReplyDeleteThe scientific community lost a pioneer in computer graphics.
His dedication and love for science was perceived by everybody who interacted with him, even if just through emails.
I've known Warren for a number of years and have come to regard him as nearly a surrogate member of my lab: he is always just "there" for cheerful and enthusiastic support, ideas and solutions. While our ideas and suggestions were truly minor, he always welcomed them and made us feel like valued collaborators. His ideas and his contributions have become essential tools in our daily work, translating the complex into the readily understandable and, even, the strikingly beautiful. I cannot imagine how we will progress in science at the rate that we have enjoyed without his continued insights and developments. I am so deeply saddened by this loss to science, to his family and friends and to society in general. I hope & trust that the scientific community will come together to both maintain and continue his work.
ReplyDeleteSometime either in 2001 or 2002, there was a visiting scientist who spent a couple of weeks in the Luger lab. I was a PhD student in the Luger lab at the time. Towards the end of his visit, the visitor presented some spectacular graphics in the Luger lab meeting. Then and there, I decided to pin him down and ask him more about the program. He said he used a program called PyMOL to make those cool displays. I sweet-talked this person into spending a few minutes at the graphics station to just show me a thing or two about the program. That was my initiation into PyMOL and there was no looking back. Everyone in the Luger lab quickly became a PyMOL-convert; the conversion process was effortless.
ReplyDeleteA couple weeks later, I caught the grad student from the neighboring lab staring at our graphics screen and the rest is history. I have never stopped initiating folks into PyMOL since. I have always loved the fact that PyMOL is free and extraordinarily user-friendly!
Warren DeLano. Never met the man. But have always heard his name mentioned in the crystallographic circles in the context of CNS and PyMOL. Now I join the 100's (if not 1000's) of PyMOL amateurs who exchanged dozens of emails with Warren with queries about PyMOL. Despite many of these things being clearly outlined in the manual, no query was too small. Warren would help me take baby steps until I got things sorted out. With those incessant email queries, it will remain a wonder to me as to how Warren made the time to reply so promptly, and as to how he kept the language in his emails friendly, pleasant and helpful. Like PyMOL, to me, Warren was extremely user-friendly.
Though I did not know the man in person, I am deeply saddened by the news of his sudden passing at such a young ago. My condolences go out to his friends and family.
To the crystallographic community and to others who ever PyMOL or CNS, Warren DeLano will continue to live through the fantastic attitude with which he communicated with the end users and through his fabulous contributions to the scientific community!
With Condolences,
Raji
I've never met him in person, but I've had periodic email conversations with him. He was always a very helpful person.
ReplyDeleteHis contribution to structural biology has been greater than perhaps is recognized. PyMOL is a tool that I've used extensively for years and has greatly facilitated our structure work. He was an excellent proponent of open source software.
It was truly shocking to hear of his untimely passing.
Warren came into Sunesis as a scientist and that he ever was, but his talent for everything computers was easily recognizable. In addition, the only faster than his amazing intellect was possible his typing. I remember one day watching him "hack-back" someone from an Eastern Block country and successfully shut down the other hacker's computer as they fought online in real time. Go Warren! I'm so sorry we're without you now. Ken
ReplyDeleteWarren was a reason to go to scientific meetings, both for his scientific contributions and his wonderful personality. I will miss him dearly.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI first met Warren in 2005 when we hunted for an obscure conference site on the USCD campus. I found out two presentations later that he developed the famous tool I used weekly and had taught to other medical illustrators for many years. My friend Janet Iwasa, reconnected us months later and Warren invited me to work with him on a large complicated animation project. We enthusiastically fired emails, test movies, and scripts back and forth through the winter holidays just to get up and running and to win the bid. He seemed to be at it 24 hours a day and I did my best just to keep up as he helped merge his powerful molecular visualization applications into my more familiar commercial animation environments. I learned a great deal about scripting, molecular visualization, and business through this collaboration and enjoyed all of my interactions with Warren. He could really make atoms dance!
ReplyDeleteBeyond that project, Warren assembled several custom versions of Pymol over the years to help improve my teaching demonstrations and to make tools for my particular audiences more accessible. He would send these to me after a single emailed request in a matter of hours with clear instructions on how to help the people in my field more accurately spread the knowledge of molecular and cell biology as the PDB rapidly fleshed out. I enjoyed meeting with him on several occasions over the years, and he will be deeply missed as a mentor, friend, and contributor to education and outreach.
Graham Johnson
I knew Warren in high school. As I sit here remembering those days and thinking of Warren, I remember his high energy & enthusiasm. I also remember that brown Honda screaming through the Gunn parking lot. How Warren explained to me that leaving cold pizza wrapped in foil on his dashboard in the morning meant having hot pizza by lunch time. Still not sure about that one. We did not stay in touch since those days, but given how crazy smart he was back then I’m not surprised to read about the wonderful impact he had in scientific community. I’m sure he will be greatly missed. My sincere condolences to his family.
ReplyDeleteI thought about using PyMOL once several years ago, but then somehow I set it aside and never took it up again. However because of my own laziness I never bothered to have myself removed from the listserv. My point is that even someone as disconnected as I am from the PyMOL community can't help but notice how dedicated he was to helping other people. The number of emails that come through bearing his name -- all of which contain some hint, trick, tip, suggestion or other useful morsel of information -- are unequivocal proof of his peerless commitment to science.
ReplyDeleteI never meet Warren personally, but by mail on the PyMOL list. We had some conversations and he oriented me on my projects.
ReplyDeleteAs I said on the Pymol list, Is contribution to science and to society is difficult to measure. The altruistic way in which he chose to use his talent have been important for so many scientist, not only because of the great program, but also because of himself as a role model for starting scientists like myself.
I also menctioned on the list that Through he never knew Warren was on the Thanks section of my undergrad thesis.
Your brother was a great man, not just a brilliant scientist, also a kind person. Some who never rested in his commitment of making this world better. I am deeply sad about his loss.
My deep condolences to you and your family
Raúl Mera-Adasme,
Santiago de Chile
Back in August, 2008, when Warren first started working with Schrodinger, we went to dinner at Keen's Chop House. I remember a wonderful meal, wonderful company, wonderful drinks, and an evening that lasted longer than I think either of us had anticipated. I was very happy that we ended up collaborating. Schrodinger customers, many of whom are also PyMOL customers, have been very happy with the bridge between our products that Warren crafted. Warren visited our New York offices regularly. Many of us knew him, and we are all in shock at the moment, myself included. But at the same time, my thoughts of Warren will always include this happy memory.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that news. Before this day, I always find an immediate anwser to anybody's question about PyMOL. It's a really bad news to all of us PyMOL users. As a sincere fans of PyMOL, I once recommonded it to other people. He will be remembered by all of us for ever.
ReplyDeleteWith my condolences to his family
A chinese research scholar
Warren loved to have the dashboard pizza in high school. Thanks to the post about that! Our mother was horrified about him doing that. But it did work.
ReplyDeleteI first met Warren in early 2001 when I was a postdoc at Stanford. It was supposed to be a quick phone call about some minor interface stuff between Gromacs and PyMol, but the next day he came down to Stanford instead, and the whole project morphed into a great discussion about science and personal friendship instead. Warren always shared his time and commitment with everybody, no matter if it was a nobel laureate or anonymous student, and you always felt it was genuine.
ReplyDeleteI'm so sad to hear this news - my first thoughts go to his family, but also because the world has lost a great scientist who touched a lot of lives. We frequently say "great scientist" about people who have been extremely successful in one way or another, but the greatest scientists of all is the one who pursues science for knowledge itself, without much thought of personal fame or gain, and I've always been amazed how Warren fit that description much better than most of us pursuing academic careers.
In just a few years, Warren changed the lives of tens of thousands of people all over the world, but never made a big deal out of it. Jen - I'm sure you know what an amazing brother you had. Although nothing we say can dampen your sorrow, it is shared by people all over the world, both today and tomorrow.
Warren - we'll never forget you, and if at all possible I'd love to help maintain your legacy by contributing more to PyMol!
I met Warren more that 10 years ago when he was at Sunesis, and I have had the pleasure of interacting and collaborating with him on many occasions throughout the years. As a scientist he was knowledgeable and competent. As a human being, he was kind, humorous and very pleasant to be around. I will miss his demeanor and his smile. I extend my deepest condolences to his family and loved ones. I hope they find comfort in the fact that Warren will be rememberd so well by so many.
ReplyDeleteChris Williams
Chemical Computing Group
I went to high school with Warren and we were in classes together. Warren was always really nice and bright. I'm so sorry to hear of his passing.
ReplyDeleteWarren was a member of the Blue Obelisk - a community which espoused the ideals of getting new and innovative software to the community. I met Warren at Blue Obelisk dinners where he generously sponsored the event and where he explained his philosophy of sustainable Open Source.
ReplyDeleteOpen Source is not easily sustainable in science and I hold PyMOL up as a leading example of how it can be done - where source can be both Open and generate an income stream. I've tried to learn from his ideas and I am sure we shall need them.
I first met Warren when he joined the Biophysics graduate program at UCSF around the time I was completing my studies in the same program. Back then I was struck by his poise and friendliness and impressed by his accomplishments as an undergraduate working with Axel. In later years I was particularly impressed to hear about his efforts to develop and distribute PyMOL as an open source product. That is the sort of pioneering spirit that I will always associate with California. I last saw Warren at an ACS meeting, where he greeted me with a friendly smile. He will be greatly missed in our community.
ReplyDeleteI'm deeply saddened by this news. Warren was brilliant but even more importantly, he was sensitive, ethical, thoughtful, and kind. He was a friend both in college and graduate school. The last time I saw him, he was so full of joy and so proud of Pymol. We had been out of touch for a few years and he showed me his amazing collection of journal covers with Pymol structures. We had lunch and talked about life and ranted together about religion and philosophy in the sunshine of downtown Palo Alto. I will always remember his infectious smile and that hair flip (you know what I'm talking about). To his family: please take care of yourselves. This is truly a difficult loss. --Mimi Shirasu-Hiza
ReplyDeleteAs a fellow Brunger lab alumni, I met Warren in both professional and social situations. He was a great guy and the contributions he made to science through his PyMol efforts and other work are incredible. I always felt honored to be chosen as an early test user and even moreso when he incorporated my suggestions into subsequent release. I recall someone saying of him that he was so active and bright that he was probably computing the amount of ATP that his brain was using as he was conversing you.
ReplyDeleteByron DeLaBarre
Although I have never met Warren in real-life, we have exchanged emails and met us on several forums.
ReplyDeleteWarren was always willing to help others and finding new solutions. He achieves a brilliant success by developing PyMOL and promoting Open Source in science idea.
Warren will be remembered, never forgotten.
I had dinner with Warren and a group of colleagues three weeks ago when he was in Philadelphia. The next afternoon he and Jason gave a very helpful PyMol tutorial at GSK to computational and medicinal chemists. "Just send me an email" he responded when I asked him what I was going to do the next time I got stuck trying to figure something out in PyMol.
ReplyDeleteFive years ago I invited Warren to present at an ACS Chemical Education symposium. I didn't know him then and wasn't sure he'd agree. But he graciously accepted and presented "Use of PyMOL as a communications tool for molecular science". He had a unique combination of intelligence, enthusiasm, generosity, and humility and will be deeply missed. May his memory be for a blessing.
I am a PhD student working of biochemistry and structural biology. I have not met Dr. DeLano or communicated with him, but I have been using PyMol for years in both my courses and my research. I really appreciate his contributions to the research of structural biology.
ReplyDeleteRest in peace, Dr. DeLano
How many drugs have progressed through research and beyondm thanks to Warren's efforts to help us visualise the world of drugs and drug targets on a molecular scale (particularly in smaller enterprises)? A tremendous and fitting legacy.
ReplyDeleteI met Warren once, at the ACS National Meeting. A genuinely nice chap who I was looknig forward to hopefully catching up with again next year. My thougts are with you at this sad time.
Living/working in the San Francisco bay area I had the pleasure of knowing Warren for a number of years. A while back we were both in Portland, OR for a conference and caught a ride together to the airport.
ReplyDeleteThe flight back to SF was delayed and we were stuck at the airport for a few hours. We both pulled out our laptops (or in Warren's case, one of his laptops), but it turned out that wireless was not available.
No problem, Warren said, I'll just throw up a cloud.
A what?
A cloud.
Well I am still not sure I know what a cloud is but after a few clicks and a little typing he was hosting his own Wi-Fi network at gate 7. Naturally, access was free and open to everyone.
My condolences to you and your family.
When I first asked a difficult question about virus representations with Pymol, I received a reply from Warren himself. I was impressed by the fact that he himself personally replied. Furthermore I was impressed with the speed, efficacy, personable tone and sweet undertone to his reply.
ReplyDeleteIt is a sad loss to the World to loose a bright mind associated with a kind heart.
Rest in Peace - You made the World a better place.
I knew Warren from attending the same junior high and high school. I remember him to be a very kind person with a wonderful smile. I hadn't seen him in years but was recently reconnected with him via facebook. My heart sank when I heard the news today. I send my sincere condolences to his family and friends.
ReplyDeleteMay his name be forever remembered through pymol and personal experience's.
ReplyDeleteI also met him at an ACS meeting, and was struck by him. It was exciting to meet a science "celebrity" of sorts, but more than that his ideas about research and our community were easy to get behind. His kind smile and immediate friendliness was extended to a total stranger amongst a sea of them.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.
Sara Nichols
I couldn't believe this sad news! I know PyMOL before I know Warren. I met him once in a meeting. He is such a nice person. Warren will be remembered for ever!
ReplyDeleteWarren will be dearly missed by all of the crystallographers all over the world. I never met him personally but had several times recieved personal messages from him for questions posted at pymol forum and benefitted trmendously for making my presentations and publications more meanigful and prettier. When i started my career in crystallography it took for me to make a good publishable picture in molscript and bobscript at least few days. When pymol came things have changed from days to few hours of effort and the pictures looked as beautiful and meanigful as molscript figures. I am sure the whole crystallography community will agree with this feeling. Loss of a genius like Warren is Himalyan. Our heart felt condolences to all of his family. and loved ones.
ReplyDeleteI have never met Warren personally. I’m one of those researches that use Pymol for research and scientific illustration. I’m truly sad to hear that Warren is gone. His work with Pymol had a profound impact in my scientific life.
ReplyDeleteMy condolences to Warren’s family.
Nuno Micaelo, Portugal
Over the last 10 years I've had the pleasure of hanging out with Warren at conferences, dozens of phone conversations and countless email exchanges. I've always been amazed at how someone so brilliant could be so humble. Warren was always eager to discuss new ideas and really went out of his way to insure that others could do the best science possible. Warren had numerous opportunities to "sell out", but stayed true to his vision.
ReplyDeleteHe was one of a kind and will truly be missed.
I have known Warren since his Yale days and most recently saw him at the eChemInfo meeting in Bryn Mawr, a mere three weeks ago, when he was his usual self - very knowledgeable, bright, kind and generous.
ReplyDeleteAt the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe), we use PyMOL to generate most of the molecular structure images on our site.
On behalf of the PDBe team, I wish his family and friends the strength to cope with this untimely loss.
Jen and family you have my condolences. I met Warren briefly following his talk at a recent ACS meeting. I did not know him well but I am deeply saddened by his loss. The research community has surely lost a rising star.
ReplyDeleteOne Tuesday night this past February, a handful of young sciencey types gathered for an open science-themed meetup at the Prolific Oven in Palo Alto. Broadcast at short notice through FriendFeed and blogs, the gathering was small and I didn't know who was going to show up (if at anyone!). It ended up being two guys from Labmeeting.com (the organizers), a guy from or formerly from Merck, myself - a graduate student at Stanford, .... and none other than Warren DeLano.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, there seemed nothing out of the ordinary. But it was truly a wonderful thing that the creator of PyMOL would take a break from his work to stop by that blustery night (probably just taking a break from his work that evening) and engage in a discussion about open source and open science with a group of young science enthusiasts. I used PyMOL often in my graduate work (indeed, the "pretty pictures" were sometimes the only bright spot in the doldrums of a PhD!) and the fact that he was essentially a one-man show makes his contributions and his commitment to helping others even more incredible.
May all the memories of Warren inspire scientists everywhere to have the same generosity of spirit. His passing is a huge loss to the scientific community but his life was a tremendous gift.
My deepest condolences to his family and friends.
-Shirley Wu
Very sorry to hear about Warren's passing. I met him at a trade show, and found him to be remarkably engaging, friendly, and down to earth. Not to mention very smart! The world, and the field, has lost one of its good guys, unselfish, and an example-setter.
ReplyDeleteMy condolences to you and your family
Jim Palmer
Many have commented on how engaged and helpful Warren was regarding questions about Pymol. The example below, which is posted on the website, is one of my favorites:
ReplyDelete# (3/8/2002) A recent anonymous question came in regarding display of Bulgarian maps. Many of you will surely be relieved to learn that, Yes, PyMOL can indeed display Bulgarian Maps should the need arise. Just convert your Bulgarian map into "png" format prior to attempting this challenging feat, and then issue the carefully chosen commands:
viewport 650,650
load_png bulgaria.png
http://pymol.sourceforge.net/pmimag/bulgaria-pymol.jpg
I had the fortune of meeting Warren for the first time 5 years ago at a ACS meeting. We had lunch together - well, kind of - he only wanted a strawberry shake so that he could continue to show me PyMOL. Warren said, "Having a real lunch would distract me from showing you the coolness of this software". He was such a humble, easy to access kind of person. Literally, I knew that if I emailed him, he would respond quickly. It's such a complete shock and I'm so saddened by our loss. My heart goes out to his family.
ReplyDeleteI have many memories from the decade-plus that I was fortunate enough to know Warren, but one happened so often that it is emblematic of how I think of him. I’d be in Warren’s office discussing some scientific problem, and he would be typing so fast that his hands would blur and the normal click-click-click of the keyboard sounded more like white noise. I would always think that no matter how fast he typed his mind was racing far, far ahead, impatient with the limits of a clumsy human-machine interface.
ReplyDeleteHe will always be remembered as the pioneer in molecular graphics. Although I have never met him in person, he was actually the reason that I enjoyed structural biology... When I started using PyMol, I just knew that I would like to study in this field. Now, after graduating, I am a phD student in another country, using PyMol everyday. I wouldn't have been a researcher if it wasn't Warren DeLano.
ReplyDeleteMy deepest condolences to his family. I feel sadness for his early journey.
So sorry to hear this. Warren was a great inspiration and mentor. At Sunesis he helped me overcome my fear of Unix. Despite his superior smarts and world-renowned scientific sophistication, he was never too good for a jaunt to the taco truck. My deepest condolences to family.
ReplyDeleteNever met or communicated with Warren, but have been in awe of him because of the extent of his contibution to Science, Computing and Open Source. Difficult to believe he was so young.
ReplyDeleteMy condolences.
Milind Khadilkar
Over the past 4 months or so, I had the pleasure of working closely with Warren. We were planning PyMOL2.0 and other great software ideas to spawn into a new company. I could write tons of stuff here, but I'll limit it to a couple things.
ReplyDeleteWarren was brilliant and full of energy. As we sat through meetings in DC (Amer. Chem. Soc.), Philadelphia (GSK), and San Fran. (Elan) I noticed something. If Warren was interested in what you were saying, regardless of whether or not he agreed with you, he would quickly bounce his knee or tap his foot. His level of excitement could be measured by the speed of the tapping. If the foot was tapping quickly, you better hope he agreed with your point of view.
Warren loved intellectual challenges. I wrote a small molecular fitting routine from a well-known reference (Kabsch). Warren invented his own using a series of Jacobi rotations. One day it was brought to his attention that my implementation was generally better at fitting by about 0.1 Angstroms or so. Thirty seconds after he saw that email, my phone rang. He wanted me to walk him through my implementation and discuss the differences. We argued over the effects of Jacobi rotations and its effect on annihilating off-diagonal covariance terms as compared to using the singular value decomposition. He then changed one variable in his code, and our solutions matched to at least 0.000001 Angstroms. In the end, his solution was far faster and just as accurate.
In closing, here's a quote from Warren: "PyMOL is proof that you don't have to be the smartest to make something useful, you can be of average intelligence but work really hard." Truth is, he was way smarter than nearly all of us.
I met Warren nearly two weeks ago at ASBMB conference at Lake Tahoe kindly co-sponsored by him. I was impressed by his extraordinary creativity, enthusiasm and determination. I'll never forget his charming smile, his generosity and kindness.
ReplyDeleteI use Pymol on a daily basis, it is an integral part of my work. Thank you for this wonderful tool, Warren! You made the world of small molecules looking beautiful and magic.
I'm deeply saddened by his loss. My deepest and most sincere condolences to his family. My heart is with you.
The first time I met Warren was playing pool at a conference in Santa Fe. In between talk about chilli and snow and having fun with (and making fun at) the other people at the conference, I spoke with him about Pymol and how we could get our company to contribute to his work even though Warren gave his work away freely.
ReplyDeleteLike others have commented, I was struck by how down to earth he was despite his obvious achievements and impact on our scientific community.
Warren will leave a gap in our community in terms of his software but also and much more importantly in terms of his ethics and personality.
I remember the first time I met Warren at his lab at Sunesis. I said to Jen: "Wow, if he was wearing lipstick he'd look just like you." I think Warren was little nonplussed by this at the time but we laughed about it afterwards. Later, at dinner parties, we sometimes butted heads over political issues. But I always knew that I was talking to the smartest guy in the room – someone who was not afraid call you out on your logical errors, though in his own well-mannered, highly articulate and laconic way. His many accomplishments – accomplished in such a short span of time – continue to amaze me. He was an amazing fellow that the world will rightly miss.
ReplyDeleteMay PyMol endure as a "living" proof of Warren DeLano's memory.
ReplyDeleteMay he rest in peace
Victor Alves, Portugal
I've known Warren for 10+ years, since we were graduate students together at UCSF. And like every other biochemist on earth, I was an active user of Pymol. I recently moved back to the bay area and randomly ran into Warren and Beth at the local grocery store a few weeks ago. He seemed happy as ever that PyMol was doing so well. I am so proud of what he accomplished -- his legacy in the form of Pymol will be everlasting. My sincerest condolences to his wife & family. I will think of Warren often and remember his generosity, intelligence, and warmth.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I never met Warren, I have loved using Pymol and his hands on approach to his "business" has made its mark on me. It is great that a scientist like Warren has been able to fulfil his dream. I had wanted to say thanks in person but.... thanks Warren. There are very few in the world who have touch so many as he has. My emotions to his passing have surprised me as I'm sure most will agree, there was always an email waiting for you in your in box..... bye
ReplyDeleteI remember finding PyMol for the first time and getting so excited about all of the innovations and slickness it had to offer. I knew it would take over like wildfire (as we all know, it did).
ReplyDeletePyMol offered a view into the mind of someone who was very smart, creative and expedient. Warren's devotation to open/free software was inspiring.
I have to admit I was a little intimidated seeing Warren at a workshop, "That's the guy that wrote PyMol!". He was kind enough to omplement me on one of my comments, and I felt proud.
My depest condolences to his family, it is so clear Warren was an extraordinary human being.
Good bye, Warren. Even though I only met you briefly, I remember you as kind and cheerful. And PyMol is a wonderful contribution. My colleagues and I use it frequently. We will miss you.
ReplyDeleteI met Warren at a few conferences at Asilomar and elsewhere, and his constant enthusiasm for science and for life energized everyone around him. Our discussions about how to make a living off niche open-source software were enlightening, and PyMol was truly an amazing gift to the community.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't just Warren's brain that worked super fast, or his fingers on the keyboard moving the speed of light, making that familiar noise, but everything he would do, it would be done with an amazing speed.
ReplyDeleteI remember the day when he came to George's and my office, sat down to what he thought it was our guest chair. Very quickly, gets up, lifts the chair up and flips it over, he then started moving all kinds of parts and buttons on the chair, mubling something that I could understand, but all I could get was, that he didn't like the chair's setting. George and I were just shocked and amused at the same time, and finally George says "Dude, what are you doing, that's my chair" ...Warren's look ...priceless!
I will miss you very much Warren. It was honor to know you and work with you. Rest in Peace
I remember a time back in the early days of Sunesis when Warren was not feeeling well due to kidney stones. It got worse as the day went and he ended up throwing up and was lying on the floor in pain (we didn't have much furniture back then) so we decided to take him to the ER. Even though he was in great pain, he still managed to joke and laugh - I think it was something about the possibility of getting sick in Andrew's nice car. His big smile always comes to mind when I think of him and it was there even as we were hauling him off to the ER.
ReplyDeleteI was very sad today by learning with surprise of Warren's death. I still remember his very efficient method of teaching the use of easy commands for his wonderful "machine" PyMOL. Warren has been always very quick in getting in touch with every user's request. He was always very ready and cheerful to everyone. PyMOL was shining by Warren's extraordinary personality and I will remember him like I would regard a great artist from Renascence. We will remember Warren's great and humble example of gratuity! You Warren rest in peace.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOur wedding ceremony would not have had music if it was not for Warren. I had left my IPod for the DJ but something went wrong. I was in the bridal room getting ready when a friend barged in exclaiming, "Do you have your wedding music on your laptop?" Me: "Yes." Friend: "Then Warren needs your password to your laptop or you are not going to have music for the ceremony!!!" He was then able to get the music off the laptop and set everything straight. He also then took the laptop and set up the rotating photo slide show in the lobby. He helped us out tremendously that day. And, he was a wedding guest who had just arrived!
ReplyDeleteWarren, you will truly be missed. Thank you for all the wonderful memories over the years. Rest In Peace.
-Leslie Ann Cruz and George Lane
Warren and I were sort of music buddies in high school, even though our specific interests in that department didn't really overlap much. I had no taste for the technological side of it at all! He was clearly extremely talented, though. If he hadn't become a scientist, he could just as well have made his mark in music... or in anything else he had chosen to pursue. I have no doubt about that. What a great person to know and a cherished friend. My sincere condolences.
ReplyDeleteWell I've managed to go and post in the wrong section. I think Warren, having helped me on several pymol-related projects and seen my primitive efforts at coding, would not be surprised! But to review my other post, Warren was really an amazing man to have created what he did and to give such individual attention it seems to each of the thousands in this community he heroically created. I wish him and his family peace and condolences.
ReplyDelete-Seth Harris
I never had the pleasure of meeting Warren but exchanged emails with him when I needed a bit of help with this or that part of his wonderful PyMOL program. He was unfailingly prompt in replying to my queries and always generous with his time.
ReplyDeleteAfter our last exchange I gratefully invited him to come out for a beer next time he was passing through London. Sadly that will never happen. I was shocked to learn how young he was and send my sincere condolences to his family.
He was a kind man and I will remember him.
It is very very sad to have your sudden premature demise! The community will always remember you for your great contribution.. It is hard to explain our grief in words!
ReplyDeleteI had the privilege to have met Warren a couple of times... In 2004 we invited him, together with Martin Noble, to deliver a seminar about PyMol in the annual CCP4 meeting. He presented the most amazing seminar which was as you can imagine impeccably and outstandingly illustrated with PyMol pictures. One of the things that speakers are expected to do after the meeting though, is to write-up a paper about their presentation. Warren was trying to evade that, and I recall being quite angry with him for not writing up ... (we could had had in the same issue of ActaD Coot,Pymol and CCP4mg published ... alas ... when I sent him my final request I had to laugh out loud when he sent back a very polite and very apologetic and really very very long email (arguably publication-length) explaining in excruciating detail the reasons he did not have time to write a long paper! Unfortunately I was unable to find a copy. Since then we have remained in email contact, and these emails allowed me to realize that Warren was a professional, but also a playful mind and a true visionary. I am pasting a small text he had sent me about a year ago, when we were chatting about ideas on human interfaces for PyMol control:
ReplyDelete> ... I think we could do
> even better with stereo cameras and good 3D depth-perception software.
> Why shouldn't I should be able to control PyMOL simply by moving my
> fingers in front of the camera? Another intriguing idea would be a simple lens that fits over the
> monoscopic camera breaking it into two juxtaposed images which form a
> stereo pair...
I hope his 'wild ideas' like this one will come true soon, and that the outstanding work and open source he left behind will surely catalyze new exciting developments for the future. In a way, he will remain for long an alive part of our community through his contributions.
Very sad news on someone with much more to give.
ReplyDeleteDr. Warren L. Delano made major contributions as a computational scientist and developer of PyMOL. I supported his campaign to have Stereo 3D capability on the Apple platform. Just one of his many ideas.
Best Wishes to his family.
We are all very sad for Dr. Warren Lyford DeLano's passing away! Structural biologists all over the world will remember him and his invaluable contribution for ever!
ReplyDeleteFeng
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI've never really been a PyMOL user, having concentrated on computational codes throughout my career. However, I talked to Warren a number of times over the last few years: about his work, the business and his strong feelings towards open-source coding.
ReplyDeleteI've not met too many people who single-handedly changed the marketplace. Warren is comparable to Linus and his creation of Linux with regards to our myriad modeling interests. His work created similar levels of enthusiasm and "customer satisfaction". He put forth a staggering amount of work, more than I would have thought possible.
It is appropriate for PyMOL to remain as a legacy, and I hope that it continues as a vibrant piece of work.
Joe
Our community is hit.
ReplyDeleteWarren has lived two ideals to an unprecedented extent. The ideal of Free Software, that is, humanism in a cold world, ethic in software development, and the concern about the social aspects surrounding Software and Computers in our digital era; and the ideal of Open Source, that is, the quest for quality, for robustness and for versatility which are shining through the extraordinary code that he published.
Warren has also setup a unique business-model for the distribution of PyMOL which courageously attempted to put those ideals into practice. This has had the virtue to put us, the customers, in front of our own responsibilities when it came to supporting those immaterial but essential aspects of our infrastructure; and it also helped us, the scientists, to regain some of our gradually lost dignity while interacting with computers : Warren just wanted us to use his application, not the opposite.
We'll obviously try to keep-up all those fights, but we've lost one of our most respected and talented leader.
-AD
Reading all these words just confirms what we all know: the generosity of Warren's work. Our Structural Biology community is privileged to continue to benefit from his legacy. It is an honor indeed.
ReplyDeleteWe deeply regret that his family and friends can no longer benefit from his presence. May these testimonials comfort you in such a difficult moment.
Your brother was a generous man.
AL
I did not know Dr DeLano personally but did correspond with him by e-mail a couple of times.
ReplyDeleteI am to this present day overawed by both his scientific and computer programming achievements. The sheer beauty of his work is reflected by the sheer aesthetic power of PyMol. This unique molecular aesthetic has created new levels of perception for imagining the functional beauty of nature.
Dr DeLano's advocacy for open-source software, besides leaving a lasting impression on me, also created an important ethical and philosophical dimension to his work. We have lost not only a great scientist but also a wonderful human being.
To the DeLano family, my deepest sympathies are with you at this difficult time. God bless.
Eb Mayat
It was only a couple of weeks ago we had Warren presenting on new PyMol developments at our eCheminfo community of practice program at Bryn Mawr:
ReplyDeletehttp://echeminfo.com/COMTY_conf09delanow
What a shock and sadness to see this news in my email box today. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.
As a scientific community let's make sure that Warren's work continues and is built upon. He created something useful for others to benefit from, and the Open Source model allows that to continue!
Barry Hardy
Founder & Director
eCheminfo Community of Practice
Douglas Connect, Switzerland
I knew Warren in high school, he was kind, generous, and supportive. He was a good listener, and brightened many a day with a smile and often something funny to say. Our nickname for each other was "bucko" for some reason, I don't remember when we started doing that. The dashboard pizza is one that I don't remember, but there you go, he's still making me smile. Jen, your story of George the ghost is so touching.
ReplyDeleteGiven Warren's personality and intelligence I am not surprised to head of his immense contributions to the scientific community and the outpouring of support here.
What a tragic loss, my heartfelt condolences to out to Warren's family and friends.
Greg Hausman
I'm quite saddened to hear of Warren's passing. People in my lab were very active users of his PyMOL program. It was one of the best programs for visualizing molecules and was a great help to our research.
ReplyDeleteMark Gerstein, Yale University
I am so sad to read about Warren's death. I remember him from high school. I had just moved to Palo Alto and Warren was one of my first friends at Gunn. He went out of his way to make me feel welcome when I felt like an outsider. Given how smart and creative that he was, I am not surprised to read about his scientific accomplishments. My condolences to his family.
ReplyDeleteMy deepest condolences to Warren's family. I am really upset with this so sad news.
ReplyDeleteI hope his family will find strength to overcome this moment.
In one way Warren will live forever through his creation PyMol and in our hearts as well.
Alan Wilter Sousa da Silva,
EMBL-EBI and University of Cambridge
What a terrible loss. Warren DeLano is truly unforgettable and his work is remarkably good example of scientific and engineering excellence.
ReplyDeleteCondolences to everyone.
The scientific community has lost a terrific scientist who made a major impact on the visualization of protein structures, through his program pymol. He pored enormous energy into its development, yet always made time to answer every email personally. As a fellow scientists and as his former colleague from the Wells Laboratory, I feel saddened to lose his brilliance and energy.
ReplyDeleteAs his friend, I'm simply devastated by this news. He was a mensch and an all-around great friend.
To Beth and his family: my heart goes out to you for your loss. I'm so sorry.
With sincere condolences,
-Greg
I was deeply saddened to learn the news. Warren has made a wonderful contribution to the scientific community through the development of PyMol and has left a tremendous legacy. His death is a loss to us all.
ReplyDeleteI have interacted with Warren through e-mail and met him once at an ACS meeting. He has always been amazingly helpful and simply fun to e-talk with. I will miss him.
James Nowick
My first substantial programming project was a plugin for PyMOL which I demoed for Warren several weeks ago. In half an hour, his assistance led to a ten-fold improvement in speed and efficiency. Only with Warren's aid, and the fantastic work that is PyMOL, have I been able to contribute anything useful to science.
ReplyDeleteStuart Ballard
My sencerest condolences to the family and loved ones. It is difficult to grasp that Warren is no longer amongst us. I never met him, but we use PyMOL in the lab very, very frequently. It is wonderful how Warren made look tiny things really great.
ReplyDeleteAlex Berndt
MRC-LMB, Cambridge
All of us at Bioinformatics.Org offer our condolences, and our thoughts are with his family at this time.
ReplyDeleteWarren spoke at our 2002 annual meeting in Tucson, Arizona, even though we were still just a young group of grad students running a site without funds or big-name backing. Here's a photo of Warren from that day:
http://www.bioinformatics.org/events/2002/2am/images/warren.png
Warren was a genius. We played pool together in high school and hung out talking about how to change the world. Warren did it.
ReplyDeleteHad I ended up living in Palo Alto instead of Illinois I know we would have hung out all the time. Maybe I might even have eventually WON a game of pool or two.
Words are failing..
Mark
I knew Warren in high school and to me he was an early example of someone who was both analytical and artistic. I have two specific memories to share.
ReplyDeleteI remember an occasion in the computer lab writing a software assignment to automatically calculate bowling scores given a sequence of pins knocked down -- such was my programming sophistication at the time. Warren was a few computers over and testing his 3-planetary-body graphical visualizer -- such was his programming sophistication at the time.
During high school Warren was also well known as a musician. I remember his band entered a school talent show and during one of the songs he donned a keytar and rocked out. Hilarious.
Warren was bright, creative, and friendly. I feel sad about his sudden loss.
I’m deeply saddened by the loss of one of the most brilliant people I’ve known, and my heart goes out to Beth and the rest of his family.
ReplyDeleteOf a long list of Warren’s examples of incredible ability that I can remember, the first was at a Wells lab group meeting at Genentech shortly after Warren joined the group as a new grad student. We were “phaging” like crazy back then and Warren, on his own initiative, developed a mathematical model relating phage ELISA data to the actual binding affinities of displayed ligands, which he had put together in one all-nighter. Equations derived in Mathematica, thermodynamics, simulations…It was so deep, insightful, well-organized, and beyond any expectations, that all of us in the room were just looking at each other in disbelief. We were laughing, like a “you just blew my mind” type of laugh. Some of us had our first taste of Warren’s genius.
On a more personal note I will always remember the hugely fun time we would in the Sunesis early days after Friday happy hours playing multiplayer strategy games like Age of Empires. As you might guess, Warren was a fearsome opponent. We were rivals that were always pitted on opposite teams. Unfortunately that meant I rarely got to see him at the keyboard during a match, but I’m told it could be pretty spectacular and entertaining to watch. Anyhow it was fun in its purest form.
Thank you Warren for your inspiration and the great memories.
Marcus Ballinger
It was always a pleasure to interact with Warren. In helping me he was always cheerful and courteous, even when some of my questions were simple or lame. We had a particularly fun exchange over implementing anaglyph stereo into PyMol in which he came back to me with a bunch of beautiful 3D images and the following e-mail.
ReplyDeleteJames,
It works (see attached). Gee, had I known it would be that easy, I'd have added this years ago!
Cheers,
Warren
Driving home after hearing the news of Warren's passing, I realized that besides working with Warren at Sunesis for 6+ years, Warren and I had also gone to high school together. In fact, in 1989, a group of us had gone to prom together, and Warren and I were in the same group photo of 5-6 couples. We were all lined up in a cheesy 80's-style pose, all of us looking pretty generic with the girls in our off the rack prom dresses and the guys in their black tuxes...except for Warren. Positioned smack in the middle of the photo, was Warren in a WHITE tux, grinning the way we all have come to remember him. My condolences to his family.
ReplyDeleteI was deeply affected by this sad and unexpected news. Although I never met Warren, I felt like I knew him because I use his program Pymol daily. His energy, vision and generosity were evident in his contributions to the science community.
ReplyDeleteMy sincere condolences to his family.
Jenny Martin, University of Queensland, Australia
The news has come to me as a shock. I met Warren recently at a conference and cant belive something can happen to him suddently. My sincere condolence to his family.
ReplyDeleteThanks Warren for providing us with such a wonderful tool. I will always remember the time we spent and the conversation we had over the dinner table.
Photos of Warren at friend's birthday party:
ReplyDeleteWarren photo 1
Warren photo 2
I have followed Warren's path in many ways since arriving at UCSF from Princeton in 1996 and it is with great sadness that I now face a future without his reliable guidance and inspiration.
ReplyDeleteIn my first year at UCSF, I did one of my rotations at Genentech to work more closely with both Warren and his advisor, Jim Wells. Warren inspired several of my own graduate research directions in molecular structure and recognition and was always generous with his time in discussing our shared fascination with how proteins interact.
Warren's wedding to Beth, his girlfriend from college at Yale, was not only a fun-filled event in celebration of their love, but also an inspiring day for me and Christina, my college girlfriend from Princeton, who several years later became my wife.
Warren was also a founding scientist at Sunesis, which was my first investment as a biotech venture capitalist.
During my four years at UCSF and the past nine investing professionally in science and technology companies, many of my most memorable conversations about science, biotechnology, business, entrepreneurship, and life were with Warren, most often over lunch in SF, South City, or Palo Alto.
The most recent of those lunches was just a month ago at Vero in Palo Alto, where we sat outside on a beautiful California day and talked for two hours about our similar paths as self-employed entrepreneurs in very different businesses, the future of both molecular modeling software and biotechnology investing, and his huge enthusiasm to have his wife, Beth, join him at DeLano Scientific full time after years of her practicing law.
While I now feel a great sense of personal loss knowing this was the last lunch I will have with Warren, I know that it is far more challenging for his beloved Beth and his family, to whom I extend my condolences.
In this time of grief, I focus on the hugely positive impact Warren had as a scientist, an entrepreneur, a son, a sibling, a husband, a dear friend to so many of us. Warren's PyMol has transformed the visualization of molecular structures and expanded the horizons of thousands of scientists around the world, many of whose kind words are alongside my own here. Warren's research in the field of molecular recognition was some of the most thorough and insightful of his time. He had a loving and supportive family and a wonderful wife. Most people would be lucky to achieve a tiny fraction of Warren's myriad successes in a lifetime and I feel lucky to have known Warren for much of his.
We will miss you Warren. Thank you for all your advice and for living your life in a way that was worth emulating.
Words cannot express my overwhelming shock and sadness. Warren and I talked a few weeks ago and we were supposed to meet for coffee this coming week…
ReplyDeleteWarren and I started graduate school at UCSF at the same time. For a decade and a half, we have known each other as classmates, fellow structural biologists, and good friends. Warren was truly an exceptional human being: brilliant, honest, kind, conscientious, gentle, loyal, generous, and goofy.
In the first couple of years, we used to take classes together. For amusement, he would spell out the word “SHELLOIL” on his calculator.
He was an advocate for Internet security before most people were aware of the concept of “identity theft.” Around that time, I was managing the computers for my lab, but didn’t take his suggestion seriously. To prove that I needed to pay more attention to data security, one day, while I was online, Warren hacked into my computer, created a file on my system, and then pinged me, all within minutes if not seconds. It suffices to say that I was fully convinced immediately afterwards and set the security level on all our computers to the highest.
Being who he was – a person who never hesitated to share his knowledge and insight, Warren also wrote an article that was published in the UCSF Synapse newspaper, suggesting that UCSF should put more emphasis on computer security. Of course, to prove his point to the school, he also hacked into the Registrar’s office. I didn’t follow what happened next, but I was pretty sure that the school was quite convinced as well.
Warren joined Dr. Wells’ lab in Genentech after our first year. He’d only occasionally visit UCSF, but he would always stop by to say hi and sometimes we would have coffee/tea together. On one occasion, he mentioned that he just picked up a new language: Python. It was around that time that he started his work on PyMOL. In his modest and un-assuming way, he only said he started a little simple project in Python. But, to many of us structural biologists, PyMOL is the amazing and wonderful tool that has changed, literally, the “faces” of so many scientific publications. And he did this almost single-handedly, while working at Sunesis.
Besides being the genius and mastermind behind PyMOL, Warren was one of the kindest and most gentle souls I’ve ever known. I remember the first time when I visited his office in South San Francisco. One wall of the office was decorated with beautiful cover illustrations of macromolecules rendered in PyMOL. He was particularly proud of a small 4x6 picture he received from an elementary teacher in Vietnam, which showed a group of young children looking at protein molecules through PyMOL in their science class. To this date, I can still remember the genuine satisfaction that shined through his bright smile – his trademark broad grin.
During one of our conversations, Warren told me about a bummer sticker he once saw: “small minds talk about people; average minds talk about things; great minds talk about ideas.” Warren loved talking about ideas. He appreciated and respected perspectives of all angles. He carried out his ideas to the fullest extent possible. I think the best way to celebrate Warren’s life is to be as he was: be true to our own ideas and live up to our potentials.
To Warren: Thank you for what you have done for us and for many heart-warming memories. You will be dearly missed.
To Beth, Jen and his family: I am SO SO sorry for your loss. I can only imagine the sadness and pain you are going through. My most sincere condolences.
Warren was a wonderful high school classmate and a kind friend. It was a pleasure to catch up with him from time to time over the years. I was stunned and so sorry to hear this terrible and unexpected news.
ReplyDeleteI was shocked and deeply saddened to learn the news of Warren's passing this week, and I want to convey my deepest sympathies to his family. I had the pleasure to know Warren for several years; we first met while I was a grad student at UCSF, and I vividly emember the enthusiasm and good cheer he brought into any converation, scientific or otherwise. I especially remember his optimism and excitement regarding his science. I remember this one time Warren and I crossed paths in an airport - we were each heading in opposite directions to make our connecting flights, and by chance we noticed each other and got to chatting. Before too long, Warren was excitedly recounting the state of PyMol developement, and the new developments with Delano Scientific. By the time he realized they were boarding his plane, he had to take off in a run. I've always admired the passion and enthusiasm that he brought to his science and to his life. I'll miss you Warren.
ReplyDeleteMy wedding photographer captured a beautiful moment of a group of us having an engaging conversation that ruptured in laughter. I just love it.
ReplyDeleteA Beautiful Moment
I remember Warren's going-away party at Sunesis. (He was leaving to work on PyMol full time). There were several gifts that were presented to him by Andrew Braisted, another founding scientist of Sunesis. Each present had a story behind it. One in particular was most amusing to me. Andrew handed Warren a box. Warren opened it to find a pair of white tennis shoes. As he was inspecting them with a puzzled look, Andrew stated, "These shoes have non-marking soles so that you don't mark up the floors of your new office." (You could always tell which path Warren took in the Sunesis building because there was a trail of black streaks from his shoes. ) Warren replied, "They are the wrong size." Everyone just started laughing.
ReplyDeleteAndrew died of a heart attack in September 2003 at the age of 39. Not too long after Warren's going away party.
Today, I was thinking that Andrew and Warren are out there somewhere catching up with each other, joking around, and talking science. This is giving me a sense of peace.
I am very saddened to learn this news. Warren and I were classmates at UCSF. Along with members of the faculty, Warren stood out as a role model of a scholar. He exuded an aura of commitment and capability. I think he had the ability to elevate the level of discussion in a room just by his presence. Knowing that he was conducting his PhD research in an industrial lab was a strong validation of the choice that I was considering at the same time. I knew that if Warren was pursuing this path, it must be a wise choice.
ReplyDeleteForemost among the reasons that I cherish my job is that it allows me to spend time with brilliant people and extraordinary personalities. Warren embodied all of that and more. I will really miss him.
With condolences to his family,
--Kent
Warren would walk so fast around the halls of Sunesis. I think many of us found ourselves nearly jogging along with him as he charged around, leaving a track of black scuff marks behind.
ReplyDeleteAs a naive young chemist starting her first job, I knew Warren as the super smart guy who made this imaging program for us at Sunesis. Took me a while to realize that it wasn't just for us, it was a scientific leap forward that he spread to the whole world. He was just such a humble, non-assuming guy, always happy to help with the smallest problem. I feel honored to have been able to know and work with Warren. My sincerest condolences to Jen, Beth, and his whole family. Warren will be sorely missed.
ReplyDelete-Emily
I supposed something was wrong the other day when Warren didn't reply to yet-another-pymol-question in his typically timely fashion. His early departure is shocking, saddening, and everything else that's been expressed in the other posts.
ReplyDeleteI share the sentiment that Warren is awesome and I deeply hope that his work for the scientific visuaization community and what he stands for will continue to live on and thrive.
Chip Lesburg
I ran into Warren in Palo Alto last year around this time at a festival, after not seeing him in many, many years. I wasn't sure it was him, but later he found me on Facebook and we had a nice chat about growing up in PA and life in Silicon Valley. My heart goes out to Warren's family and close friends. He was such a nice guy and I am extremely saddened by this terrible news.
ReplyDeleteI'm as dumbfounded as everyone else by the news of Warren's passing. As seems to be the case with so many other folks, I only ever 'e-met' Warren, chiefly via the PyMOL mailing list. Features of someone's personality often don't come through in those types of exchanges, but this was refreshingly not the case with Warren; beyond his expertise in all things PyMOL, I was most often impressed by his selfless willingness to help others and, in a similar vein, his pleasant and occasionally lighthearted attitude. A memory of the latter dates back several years, when I began digging into PyMOL in order to hack-in a MOLMOL-like 'sausage' representation (possible because of Warren's open source vision!). We had a back-n-forth regarding what to call the new rep, the following being Warren's playful stream-of-consciousness that led to 'putty':
ReplyDelete"Hmm...can we use a different name than saus? Sausage already has a meaning in PyMOL: sphere-capped cylinders. To me it looks like something you squeeze out of a tube...toothpaste, glue, grout, caulking, putty, or frosting. What do other software packages call this
representation? Paste, grout, and putty are nice and short..."
The other recurring theme that stands-out most in my memory is Warren's legendary helpfulness: I'd wager that every PyMOL user has probably never deleted an email from him, as these typically contained gems of PyMOL wisdom. I remember thinking after one of Warren's lengthier posts that, in the spirit of the H-index used to quantify scientific publication impact, there ought to be a 'D-factor' defined as the average number of useful notes from some particular person which get saved-away for future reference!
To say nothing of the tragic loss to his own family & friends, Warren's passing is a profound loss to the open source, molecular graphics, and structural biology communities.
Though I hadn't been in touch with Warren for several years, I felt such a loss and my heart sunk when I heard of his death. I got to know Warren through Andrew and while I worked at Sunesis. He was one of those people w/ whom any period of time could elapse and you could always pick up where you left off. A couple years after Andrew died, I moved into a new place and had to set up my computer. I was at a complete loss. I hadn't talked to Warren for a long time, but called anyway to see if he could help me out. He came over that same day. We had a great time hanging out and catching up.
ReplyDeleteWarren was such a good soul and his absence is such a profound loss.
To Beth and family: be strong. You will make it.
Rest in peace, Warren... and say hi to Andrew.
Joelle
What I liked about Warren was that while he was a great scientist (and the many email above a such a testament to that), he was also interested in so much else in the world. I am not a scientists and one day at a wedding, I started chatting with him about Japanese manga and anime, and he seemed as interested in that as in the latest science. We will miss you Warren--actually we already do.
ReplyDeleteI'm vary sad about Warren's passing.Although I only met Warren with e-mail via the pymol mailing list, I was impressed by his selfless willingness to help others,lighthearted idea etc.Miss you Warren...
ReplyDeleteTwo memories of Warren have been running through my mind for the past few days. During my interview at Sunesis Warren was assigned to take me to lunch. In those days Sunesis seemed to have a doubling time of about a month, so they interviewed candidates literally on a daily basis. We had a great lunch. Near the end Warren described the huge numbers of interviews and said "There are so many (candidates consuming our time with interviews) that we automatically hate them all until they give us some reason not to." I loved his candor. Somehow this unexpected disclosure really made me feel welcomed.
ReplyDeleteNot long after starting at Sunesis, Warren and I were both working late one Thursday night. I was running an assay, but didn't want to miss Friends, so I set up the monitor in the boardroom as a large-screen TV. The picture was grainy and the sound static-laden. Warren came to investigate the noise, determined in a glance that he could improve the clarity and went to work making Friends viewable. I'm pretty sure that Warren couldn't have cared less about Friends, but was his typical generous self, willing to help me achieve my goal, insignificant as it was. Once we had the TV set up, we both spent the "Friends" time in the conference room, but ran back – me to the lab and Warren to his office - during the commercials. I think all I accomplished during the commercials was to develop a western blot. Warren probably solved several differential equations and implemented the sculpting commands in PyMol during the same break. Thinking of the science-punctuated Friends episode and sharing it with Warren makes me smile.
I am profoundly sad to know Warren is gone. I have taught hundreds of students to use PyMol and have seen the way it has impacted their science. He did with the world what my dad always advocated we do with campsites – he left it better than he found it. I wish he could read this page full of testimonials to reaffirm how deeply his work is appreciated by a huge community. He will be sorely missed.
Jeanne Hardy
We are gathering photos of Warrren. Please send photos with your name, (approximate) date of photo, and a description of the photo to:
ReplyDeletephotosofwarren at gmail dot com
Photos will be posted here until they can be incorporated into the memorial website.
I am shocked and saddened by Warren’s death. When PyMOL appeared in the world of structural biology, the job of explaining the key details of a complicated structure suddenly became much easier because we can quickly make clear and beautiful pictures. PyMOL is a wonderful communication tool that lets us focus on structure and biology and (almost) forget about computing. For years, it has been an essential tool for my research group – thanks to luscious molecular pictures, free availability, and Warren’s constant updates and improvements.
ReplyDeleteTonight as I prepare a teaching lab on PyMOL for chemical biologists, I remember Warren and wonder how much more he might have contributed...
My condolences to his family and friends.
Though I am not familiar with Warren as a person but I am quite familiar with his work 'PYMOL open source soft ware'. He is an embodiment of talent.
ReplyDeleteMay his soul rest in perfect peace.
PyMOL is an awesome program which I use regularly in my work. It's tragic that Warren isn't around anymore to continue to maintain and develop it.
ReplyDeleteIn science one has to ultimately sell our story to our audience (be they companies, colleagues, students, lay people or government). What Warren did was transform our ability to present our results. Before Warren, programs existed loved by experts but challenges to novices. PYMOL is a program anyone can use not only to show structures but to learn about them. The genius is the simplicity of PYMOL to use (which required the extraordinary talent of Warren to make). The ubiquitous nature of protein structure pictures is testament to what he achieved. His work inspired in the very best way competition and emulation.
ReplyDeleteI am so very sorry about this tragic and far too early death. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family. I hope they can take some scrap of comfort by knowing that Warren's accomplishments are admired and remembered by the structural biology community.
Jim Naismith, CCP4
I was pointed to PyMol when I was starting my postdoc. Warren helped me out several times when I couldn't figure things out, making it do things that it wasn't (strictly speaking) supposed to do! When I had him show me things, I had to have him slow down because he just zipped through things so fast!
ReplyDeleteEven now, it's the program I use for showing people what molecules look like.
My condolences to Beth and the family.
I met Warren in high school. He was wondrously unconcerned about the things that consumed most teenagers – fashion, social status, having the right friends, whatever. He was phenomenally talented, and would always surprise me with some hidden skill that I never knew he had.
ReplyDeleteHe composed music, he wrote a 3-d ray tracer on his freaking *calculator*, he aced every single AP bio test, he tapped into the wiring in his college dorm so he could steal internet (back in the days before everyone got internet in their dorms).
But beyond his talent, he was humble about it all. He never bragged, just shared. Warren was the easiest friend ever. Even though we’d sometimes not talk to one another for years, I always felt like we could just pick up where we left off at any time.
No exaggeration – every few months I’d daydream that I’d eventually move back to Palo Alto and we’d be able to hang out, do stuff. Maybe I’d be able to tear him away from that PyMol thingy and we’d make a game together.
Pymol made structures accessible to students and non-specialists in a way that no other software has. Using Pymol, I finally felt that I could teach undergraduates how to learn from structures themselves instead of just showing them premade pictures.
ReplyDeleteWarren's educational legacy will be immense.
Thanks Warren, you'll be missed immensely.
ReplyDeleteAs a grad student at UCSF who attended lectures by Warren and then used his software, I am deeply saddened by the loss of such a valuable contributor to the biomedical research community. I am confident, however, that his mark is here to stay.
ReplyDeleteMy most sincere condolences.
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to read all of the comments (so many!), but I'm one of many thousands of PyMol users who interacted with Warren briefly, but even thorough that small window, could perceive what a wonderful person he was.
Something that I hope you will take some comfort from is the fact that Warren made a contribution that was not only valuable to researchers in structural biology, but throughout the biological sciences, in that it provided a *free* method of visualizing what is becoming one of the most important facets of molecular biology.
I teach introductory biochemistry at a Canadian University, and Warren's free software makes it easy for me and my students to engage with and simply play with the wealth of what is known about the structures of proteins. His contribution to both basic science and the education of scientists will persist long into the future. Indeed, I sincerely (and, admittedly somewhat selfishly) hope his legacy will continue to be developed. From what little I knew of Warren, I think that is what he would have wanted.
Again, my most heartfelt sympathy for your loss.
Bryan D. Crawford.
I got the chance to visit Warren in his office when starting PyMol and compare entrepreneurial notes. He was an inspiration. There was a lot heart in his work. He put his spirit into his work.
ReplyDeleteWarren was the year behind me at UCSF. He was over several times to play bridge at my house, critical since bridge requires exactly four people to play. The last time I saw him was a year or two ago; it was a Sudnay morning in a Starbucks in Foster City, and he was returning his U-Haul as he was in the process of moving to Palo Alto. It was nice catching up.
ReplyDeleteIt was saddening to find out someone you knew personally, liked, and admired passed away.
R.I.P. Warren
ReplyDeleteSomething I haven't seen here at all- Warren was the winner of the Clements prize for the best Ph.D thesis in the basic sciences at UCSF. Success never got into Warren's head, and the ideas never stopped coming out of it. He was a great friend, and a great asset to science and to humankind.
ReplyDeleteI knew Warren both at Yale and at UCSF. We overlapped briefly in Axel Brunger's lab where we were both undergraduates. I believe I was two years ahead of him, but we were pretty much the only undergraduates working in Axel's lab, which was about seven people on NeXT computers at the time. And we were then both graduate students in the biophysics group at UCSF. It was clear how brilliant and warm he was the day I first met him in Axel's lab.
ReplyDeleteThe news is terribly shocking and upsetting. While I never got to know Warren that well, I feel the overlap of our early scientific and educational careers very strongly. And seeing the long list of colleagues and friends, admirers and acquaintances, is incredibly moving. It is nice to see some familiar names, who I haven't seen in many years, writing about Warren.
My thoughts are with his family and friends.
Sincerely,
Anton
I manage a the Bio-Computing Teaching Lab at Harvard University. Shortly before I was made aware of PyMOL, our faculty and staff use a number of tools to teach macro molecular data structures manipulation. Frankly, there were too many. It was inefficient to deal with lab manuals for over 10 different programs which would essentially do similar visualization tricks. Not quite.
ReplyDeleteI met Warren in January 2004 at his office in South San Francisco, when his office was staffed with one employee (him) to discuss a potential integration of PyMOL into our lab operation. Warren and I were very enthusiastic with the prospect, but I was concerned our faculty would not want to "rely on one vendor". So I asked Warren, why don't you help me lead a workshop at Harvard? I knew that there was no one better for demonstrating to the value of PyMol.
After he arranged several meetings in the east coast to visit Pharma companies, he made an accommodation to visit Harvard and lead the workshop. Our faculty and staff were very pleased--and impressed I may add--our TFs loved the potential solution. But it was Warren's personal touch what made the entire project success. After the workshop, we had lunch at the Faculty Club, where he was very comfortable talking and explaining the capabilities of PyMol to just about anyone who would approach him. I saw him last time on May 2009 and briefly discussed another visit to our Bio-Teaching Labs. When I learned we had passed away, I felt so sad he will not visit us physically this year, yet I feel very happy and blessed that I had the opportunity to meet him and and deal with him personally. At a lunch meeting in 2004, I learned how much he loved living in the bay area. I also learned his wife was instrumental with the legal aspect of his business. He also told me his family and many friends were very supportive during the incipient stage of Delano Scientific. I know Warren will be sorely missed.
My most sincere sympathies to his wife, and his entire family and friends.
Pepe Lopez
BTL Harvard University.
I never met Warren, but I wanted to add to the many voices thanking him for contributing PyMol to the scientific community. PyMol made crystal structures (and thinking in terms of structure) more accessible to us non-crystallographers everywhere. It may seem like a small thing, but having powerful yet easy-to-use software certainly helped me see things in a new light several times, and I'm sure that's true for many others. I hope that legacy of enabling scientists' imaginations will bring an eventual measure of comfort to Warren's loved ones and friends. My condolences to them.
ReplyDeleteI met Warren in 2001; he came to make a demo of this software to our lab and to install it on our computers for general use. I initially thought about taking notes of the install procedure only to realize how hopeless it would be trying to catch up .... (thanks to bash history I was able to see what had happened).
ReplyDeleteI remember thinking at the time how courageous of this guy to drop his job and enter this uncertain business of developing opensource software. I'm glad he did what he did, he set a precedent to look at, something to encourage developers and scientists to come, and he left us with a magnificent piece of open software which the community has the opportunity to pick up and carry on.
The last time I saw Warren was at a barbecue at his house which he organized for those early contributors/beta testers of PyMOL. What a generous guy. Thank you Warren's parents for raising such a great person.
Ezequiel "Zac" Panepucci
As I read messages left by Warren’s friends and colleagues, I was awe struck by the magnitude of his technological impact worldwide. As a former Sunite, I had the pleasure of knowing Warren: I remember the errant lock of hair, the fingers that raced over the keyboard, and the knee that kept pace with his thoughts. Warren was a “regular fellow” who just happened to be a super smart geeky scientist. A few PyMOL-created pieces of art were framed and hung on walls at our brand new South San Francisco facility. To the entire DeLano family and to the friends Warren left behind…may your enormous grief quickly subside and be replaced by warm memories and gentle laughter. Charin G
ReplyDeleteI only met Warren once but have used his software and admired him as a scientist and entrepreneur for a long time. The kind words here make me wish I knew him better. He truly made a difference in his pioneering work. Here is my blog post dedicated to him:
ReplyDeletehttp://bit.ly/39Y6We
My thoughts are with his family.
Mary Canady
On behalf of the Regional Student Group of Eastern Africa, i would like to express our condolences to the family and friends of Dr. Warren. It is such a great loss to the scientific community. His contributions to the field will be remembered.
ReplyDeleteI have personally used PyMOL in my work.
R.I.P Dr. Warren
Warren visited Daylight in Santa Fe in about 2000. He was at Sunesis but working hard on PyMol which was already great. His incredible talents were accompanied by a rare kind of humility which was evident then as he paid homage to Dave Weininger and Roger Sayle and their work. Thank you Warren for your great contributions.
ReplyDelete- Jeremy Yang
I'm truly shocked... I have met Warren several times at different meetings and when he visited our office a couple of years back. Each time he struck me as a well balanced, very nice, and always positive kind of guy. Last time I've met him at a small chemistry conference (October 12-16, 2009, Bryn Mawr, PA) - just 2.5 weeks before his sudden death. We had a little chat in between sessions; he complained about being "stressed out recently"...
ReplyDeleteMy 'unplugged' nature delayed (by 10d) the learning of such impressive and sad piece of news. My moved condolences towards all his clique.
ReplyDeleteI was lucky enough to meet Warren at an EMBO course on biomolecular simulation, held at Pasteur Institute in Paris (Jul 2004). A tiny anecdote comes to mind.
Fond on gnu/linux --fundamentalist at the time--, I joked about a commercial OS installed on his 'travelling laptop'. He instantly quenched his smile and replied seriously: "You know, I really miss my office when abroad, where one enjoys constantly moving around computers, operating systems, hardware combinations, and so on." After pausing, he laughed and added: "Yet such fun may well be the very Hell sometimes!!"
His willingness to solve people's problems, with beauty and rigor, was simply awesome. With PyMol, one felt something big was coming; like a big leap in the way we travel through biological macromolecules. And so it was, as the rest is pure evidence.
All the best,
Martín Graña
Institut Pasteur de Montevideo
After a 20 minute debut presentation that I gave many years ago, Warren, whom I have never met, had very nice things to say, as well as extremely insightful comments. I was immediately impressed both by his friendliness and the fulness of his understanding. We have lost a leading light in molecular science, but I hope his influence lives on.
ReplyDeletePreston MacDougall
Middle Tennessee State University
I met Warren this year at the SBGrid meeting in Boston, it was wonderful talking to him after numerous conversations on the PyMol mailing list. I was highly impressed with how well he anticipated the needs of PyMol users and for almost any request he usually had something in the works or an elegant solution to their problem... He was a wonderful speaker and a very generous and helpful human being...He will be sorely missed by all who met him or knew him through his work. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
ReplyDeleteShivender Shandilya
U. Mass. Med. School, Worcester.
I,Jitendra Narayan,along with my BioinformaticsOnline(BOL)team,deeply saddened by the loss of such a valuable contributor to the biomedical research community. I am confident, however, that his mark is here to stay.
ReplyDeleteMay his soul rest in perfect peace.
I met Warren during his visit to Harvard a few years ago (see Pepe Lopez's post above). His energy and enthusiasm was contagious! I had used PyMOL only sparsely before then, but have been a convert since. As others pointed out, PyMOL is an outstanding teaching tool; at Harvard it is used in multiple undergraduate courses. Not only can teachers use it to easily make high-quality presentations, it is also simple enough that students can readily learn how to use it and explore structures on their own. And that's something Warren cared about and facilitated immensely: making the wonders of macromolecular structures widely accessible to non-structural biologists.
ReplyDeleteMy sincere condolences to Warren's family and friends.
Rachelle Gaudet
This in the category of: no memory too small.
ReplyDeleteI'm a high-school classmate who only knew Warren tangentially. I remember he used to blush! It was pretty cute.
It's so sad to hear that Warren has died, so hard for the family & friends he leaves behind. And bittersweet to hear he contributed so much to science, because no doubt he had much more to give.
I guess we can only grieve now and be grateful we had him as long as we did.
-Toby Sterling
When Warren came to NIH with a team from Apple's scientific group to demonstrate PyMOL, he took extra time to visit with me and another researcher in our lab to show us some special settings allowing us to use PyMOL more effectively.
ReplyDeleteHe enthusiastically shared his knowledge and was genuinely interested in helping us make PyMOL work for us.
At the time I was interested in some advanced shading with the PyMOL renderer. He advised me to try:
set antialias, 2; set direct, 0; set light_count, 10; set ray_shadow_decay_factor, 0.3; set reflect, 1.3; set specular, 0
Later, he generously negotiated licensing terms with our group. Although PyMOL seemed to be his source of income, he seemed more interested in helping us use it than in extracting every last dime.
Best wishes to Warren's family!
Darrell Hurt
I never met Warren in person but I communicated with him via E-mail discussing new features of the MacPymol software and his kindness and generosity was felt through the ether. I will always remember him fondly and I miss him.
ReplyDeleteI first used pymol in 2004..And I have used it uptill now! Warren did more in his short time on earth!!
ReplyDeleteIt is not how long you stay on the earth but how much you contribute to humanity!! Warren has given back to mankind brilliantly and excellently!! His name will live forever! WE will miss him..His inspiration will live unceasingly!
I'm stunned to have just learned of Warren's sudden passing. We worked closely together while I was a post doc and he was finishing his Ph.D. at Genentech. Warren was without question one of the most gifted yet humble scientists I've known. He was always there to offer encouragement and help and I, along with the rest of you, will miss him dearly.
ReplyDeleteDave Meininger
Warren was a great guy. Those who met him liked him. He was super bright. I first met Warren back in the Sunesis days... and we stayed in touch as he went independent. His passing is a huge loss. He was so full of innovation and ideas, many of which he put into practice. He was a big supporter of our efforts here at PubChem and open source in general. I am not sure what more to say other than that I will miss him.
ReplyDeleteSpecial thanks to Warren’s sister for setting this site up to allow us to express ourselves.
Evan Bolton
Warren was my nephew so I knew him from his childhood. What I find so baffling is that Warren's sunny personality seemed so constant over his entire life. I never once sensed any depression or anxiety; to the contrary, he always had a twinkle in his eye and a relaxed disposition. What a loss to his family, friends and to the world.
ReplyDeleteI just can't believe it... He was of my age... I just can't believe it...
ReplyDeleteI never met him, but my first email exchange with him dated back to March 2002.
I proposed him to be a beta tester for the prerelease of PyMOL for MacOS X. Since then, we had regular contacts. He was so enthusiastic, so generous, so smart...
I was so proud to watch PyMOL growing in the community. I'll have a thought for Warren each time I launch PyMOL. And believe me, that is many times a day!
I met Warren at an ACS meeting PyMol booth, and just a few weeks ago he was here at GSK teaching us about advanced features of PyMol. He touched my life and career through those brief moments and through PyMol, which I've used extensively as a medium to output and share my research, and consider one of the most robust, user-friendly and pretty molecular modeling software available for any price. I remember him as a warm, friendly, helpful, and extremely knowledgable individual (he gave me a 2-page cheat sheet of PyMol commands that he dismissively referred to as a "brain dump" but is actually quite well organized).
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts and prayers go out to all who were closest to him and his family. Warren was taken from us before his time, but his candle burned brightly and illuminated the entire life science community. We will miss him, and should honor and further his contributions to science.
General and I had the rare opportunity to spend a week with Beth and Warren on their honeymoon. It was not planned but our daughter, Stephanie, attended their wedding and found out at the reception that they were headed off to Hawaii the next day. We were also going to Hawaii. When we met in Hawaii, Warren and Beth came to our roon and Warren said "sign us up for all the fun stuff". We had dinner several times but the most memorable time together was a Sunset Cruise. We were taking a tour bus from the docks back to the hotel late at night. During the bus ride, Warren and Bill emgaged in a loud and intense discussion about the relative merits of using battle elephants in some internet game they had been playing. We were sitting in the back of the bus laughing but we got many angry looks from the other passengers who were wondering why we weren't keeping our loud and laughing children quiet so they could sleep.
ReplyDeleteOur next trip to Hawaii was planned and we all met for another week of fun, They rented a beautiful home. Warren was playful and caring and we had another fun week. We only saw him once after that trip.
We had no idea what a brilliant, generous scientist he was. We only knew his as Warren and had fun playing together in Hawaii. As we read all the messages, we were taken aback and really should not have been surprised that he gave so generously to the scientific community. We knew one of his goals was to teach all he knew to all who would listen.
His contributions to the world will be remembered forever. There are pictures of our second trip on web site.
We love you Beth
Norine & General
In a belated response to Mark's post, my dominant memory of Warren is also bridge games. In a group of competitive people, he was always calm. I remember him, stretched out on Mark's couch, in some wee hours of the morning almost asleep, waiting for the rubber to finish. He was a very special guy. It was always wonderful to run into him....
ReplyDeleteI never met or corresponded with Warren DeLano, but I've used PyMol everyday for the last 5 years of my life, and it is such a marvelous program. I am very saddened by the loss of this incredible man.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I didn't know Warren personally, I was impressed with his forever program "Pymol". I've used his program in my seminars and in classrooms and since 2 years ago I've watched development of the software.
ReplyDeleteMay his soul rest in peace.
Commented here to show my condolences to his family and friends.
Wow, I just heard through my friend Tamer Nassar on Facebook that Warren has passed on - I'm greatly saddened by this. My condolences to you and the family!
ReplyDeleteI went to Gunn with Warren and he and I played in a band called Nemesis; we played a few functions at the high school. What many people may not know is that Warren was an amazing keyboardist and was very creative musically.
I always remember how kind he was and so trustworthy. He was always nice to everyone and was well liked. I remember our Saturday jams at Tamer's house on the weekend and still have a recording somewhere (I hope!) of these jams.
Life goes on, but we lose people along the way and Warren deserves acknowledgement for his wonderful effect on my life, and as I'm reading, many other lives as well.
Nathaniel Flick
bassist, interaction designer
Gunn Class of '88
It's cold and raining in San Diego, one of my home recording microphones had a major malfunction a little earlier...and I just got this terrible news, which eclipses all of the former. Condolences to the family and everyone represented here, and encouragement to celebrate his life now, though it may be difficult.
ReplyDeleteLike my brother Nathaniel (who commented above), I too was in the band Nemesis with Warren during our "internment" at Henry M. Gunn high school in the mid to late eighties. As with many erstwhile friends nowadays, I found a great satisfaction in reconnecting with him on Facebook a few months back.
It is not surprising, upon observing some of the other comments here, to see him innovating in his chosen field as much as I recollect him doing in music, as he had a highly inquisitive, energetic, pioneering spirit. He could've been a rock star. In fact, he could've done anything with his life and it would've been with the upmost elan. That he chose to serve mankind through science--and made major contributions, by the sound of it--makes me even prouder for having known him.
If the death of a friend is the question, coping is the answer. I hope all of you who knew Warren will find the strength to cope with this loss, preferrably through eachother. Remember him together; someday this initially melancholy act will transform into celebratory reminiscences of a great man, which, though I didn't know him repletely, I like to believe he was.
Peace be to you all, in loving memory of Warren,
Simeon Flick
musician