Herbert M. Geller
Herb Geller passed away on April 16, 2023 from complications of advanced prostate cancer. Herb’s attitude throughout his battle with cancer was incredibly positive and he continued his research endeavors at NIH until just weeks before his death.
Herb received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Physiology at the University of Rochester. After many years as a Professor of Pharmacology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, he joined the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 1991 as Chief of the Developmental Neurobiology Laboratory in the Cell and Developmental Biology Center. Herb published over 150 articles focusing on how proteoglycans provide extracellular signals for axon guidance and how these signals could improve recovery of function following brain injury.
Herb had a great commitment to training the next generation of researchers, serving as the Director of the Office of Education in the NHLBI intramural program from 2001-2019. He was also active in the Society’s mentoring program, taking a mentee at every meeting since the program began. In 2018, Ann Stowe, one of his early mentees, successfully nominated Herb for the Bernice Grafstein Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Mentoring. The photo shows Herb (with his wife, Nancy), his post-doc advisor (Don Woodward, far left) and six of his (over 50) mentees, including Ann Stowe who nominated him (next to Nancy), on the occasion of Herb’s receiving the award.
The funeral (April 18, 2023) was live streamed: https://www.ohrkodesh.org/streaming. Start at minute 30.
