John H. Frenz

Very saddened to learn about John's passing almost a year after the fact. John was an incredible leader and mentor to me at Genentech - my first job out of college. He leaved an indelible impression on me. RIP John

I am saddened by learning about the passing of John. I knew John when I was at Yale University doing research with late Csaba Horvath in 1978 to 1986. John was a great person and will be missed.

I was sorry to learn of John's passing, and I will cherish many of my memories of our working together. I was trying to remember the source of his picture, which I found was from Genentech's 2002 Annual Report. The complete picture and quote from that report is below.

Another schoolmate and friend gone too soon.

John and I started our career at Genentech in SF together. We shared the same office then. We often discussed and expressed our own opinion about separation science as like different opinions from our PhD advisors (he with Csaba Horvath and I with Barry Karger). Our boss at Genentech then (Bill Hancock) loved to hear the different opinions for balance decisions. We, including the boss Hancock, played tennis after the work and had beer at the nearby Raman Club after tennis. That was the...

I worked with John in the same department from the time he joined until he left Genentech. The smile in the photograph is exactly how I remember him. He was knowledgeable, an excellent scientist and at the same time a very easygoing person to interact with. I have planted 10 trees and made a donation to the American Cancer Society in his honor. My condolences to his family.

I worked with John for many years at Genentech in South San Francisco and knew him and his wife Jana very well. He was an exceptional scientist and so interesting on a personal level. My condolences to the family. John will live on in my fond memories of him in an outside the lab.

I heard of John's untimely passing with a heavy heart this morning from a LinkedIn post from Billy Wu. It was a bad day. I first met John and Jana when they were graduate students at Yale's Department of Chemical Engineering with Professor Csaba Horvath in 1983. Our paths crossed many times later when I visited Genentech in 1989, when he won the Perkin-Elmer Award, and when he chaired the 2006 HPLC conference in San Francisco. Everyone universally liked John, and he was always pleasant...