Full Text of SR2432 99th General Assembly
SR2432 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY |
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| 1 | | SENATE RESOLUTION
| 2 | | WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to | 3 | | learn of the death of Klaus Schulten, who passed away on | 4 | | October 31, 2016; and
| 5 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten was born on January 12, 1947 in | 6 | | Recklinghausen, Germany; and
| 7 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten earned a degree in physics from the | 8 | | University of Muenster in 1969 and obtained his Ph.D. in | 9 | | chemical physics from Harvard University in 1974; he served as | 10 | | a physics professor at the Technical University of Munich | 11 | | before joining the University of Illinois Department of Physics | 12 | | as a faculty member in 1988; and
| 13 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten led a team of more than 30 students | 14 | | and postdoctoral scientists in the Theoretical and | 15 | | Computational Biophysics Group, which he founded at the Beckman | 16 | | Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in 1989; with a | 17 | | background in chemical physics and a keen understanding of the | 18 | | potential of powerful computers to model biological structures | 19 | | and the physics and chemistry that drives them, he led the | 20 | | development of software that enables scientists around the | 21 | | world to observe how molecules behave and interact at the | 22 | | atomic scale, including the program VMD for the interactive |
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| 1 | | display, animation, and analysis of large biomolecules, and the | 2 | | large-scale molecular dynamics simulation program NAMD, which | 3 | | accounts for the moment-by-moment chemical interactions of as | 4 | | many as 100 million atoms, with time steps on the order of a | 5 | | millionth of a billionth of a second; he also built a | 6 | | computational microscope that captures the mechanisms of | 7 | | biomolecules in action; and
| 8 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten built his own parallel computer | 9 | | before they were available commercially and was among the first | 10 | | scientists to use the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National | 11 | | Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of | 12 | | Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and | 13 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten and his group were responsible for | 14 | | fundamental contributions to numerous areas of biology, most | 15 | | recently to understanding photosynthesis, force generation in | 16 | | cells, membrane channel dynamics, and large-scale cellular | 17 | | organization; he and his colleagues revealed the precise | 18 | | chemical structure of the HIV capsid, teased out new details of | 19 | | the dynamic assembly of the ribosome, and contributed to a | 20 | | deeper understanding of the chemistry of odor detection; he | 21 | | also studied the magnetic field effect on migratory birds; and
| 22 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten was a Swanlund Professor of | 23 | | Physics; he served as director for the NIH Center for |
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| 1 | | Macromolecular Modeling at the Beckman Institute and was | 2 | | co-director of the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells; | 3 | | he was also affiliated with the Department of Chemistry and the | 4 | | Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology; he trained | 5 | | over 77 graduate students in physics, biophysics, and chemistry | 6 | | while at the University of Illinois; and
| 7 | | WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten is survived by his wife, Zan | 8 | | Luthey-Schulten; his daughter, Charlotte Schulten (Dr. S. Case | 9 | | Bradford); his brother, Christoph Schulten; and his sister, | 10 | | Karin Balmer; therefore, be it
| 11 | | RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL | 12 | | ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we, along with his | 13 | | family and friends, mourn the passing of Klaus Schulten; and be | 14 | | it further
| 15 | | RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 16 | | presented to the family of Klaus Schulten as an expression of | 17 | | our sympathy.
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