Obituary

Peter L. Steponkus, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Crop Physiology at Cornell, died July 14 in Ithaca, after a long battle with cancer. He was 59.

Steponkus was born in Chicago in 1941 and graduated from Colorado State University in 1963 with a B.S. degree in horticulture. He received an M.S. degree in horticulture/plant physiology from the University of Arizona in 1964 and a Ph.D. degree in plant physiology/biochemistry/horticulture from Purdue University in 1966. Upon completion of his graduate studies, he rose through the professorial ranks at the University of Arizona (1966-1968) and Cornell (1968-2001), culminating in his appointment in 1987 as Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in Cornell's Department of Agronomy.

An international authority in the area of environmental stress physiology of plant and animal systems, his research focused on low-temperature biology (cryobiology) for the study of cold acclimation and freezing injury of herbaceous plant species, such as winter cereals (rye, wheat, barley and oat) and the development of procedures for the cryopreservation of biological tissues. His recent research was focused on determining the fundamental biophysical mechanisms of membrane destabilization and the identification and mode of action and processes of cold-regulated genes that are involved in the cold acclimation of Arabidopsis thaliana.

He served on numerous editorial boards, held many positions within the Society of Cryobiology and had been an invited speaker at numerous national and international meetings sponsored by the International Botanical Congress, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Royal Microscopy Society, several Gordon Research Conferences, the American Chemical Society and The Royal Society.