Dr. Roger A. O'Neill

Dr. Roger A. O'Neill 1957 - 2008 Roger O'Neill died on May 8, 2008 after a short decline from complications of adenomal carcinoma. He was attended by many family members and friends during his terminal illness, and received exemplary attention from Dr. Mojdeh Talebian in the Intensive Care Unit of Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City. Roger was born in Princeton, New Jersey to an academic family. His father was a Professor of Physics at Princeton University, and his mother a Professor of Psychology at Trenton State College. Roger inherited extraordinary gifts: His father's acute scientific insight, his mother's deep understanding of human nature, and both parents' skill in analysis and clear exposition. His family's frequent camping trips encouraged his innate fascination with nature and his love of the outdoors. He enjoyed the rustic pleasures of hiking, fishing, gardening, and tidepooling, and grew into a skilled biologist. Roger received his A.B. in biology with Distinction from Kenyon College in 1979, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1983. Immediately following graduate school he received a four-year National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship, the first of many awards recognizing his creativity as a scientist. Roger practiced his profession in six life sciences companies, beginning with Genencor International, and ending with BioTechNiks. He co-founded GlycoGen, and at Applied Biosystems he developed the reagent chemistry used by both the NIH and Celera in their race to sequence the human genome. He co-edited and prefaced two books, and published 28 scientific papers and more than 200 abstracts. At the time of his death he held 12 issued patents and had nine more pending. Mens et Manus: Along with a gift for biological science came a cornucopia of other talents. Roger was brilliant with his hands: a sensitive angler, a crack shot, an elegant glider pilot, a skilled luthier, and a maker of beautiful objects. His cases in rare woods are museum quality, and his jazz and classical guitars have been praised by professional musicians for their warm sound and fine craftsmanship. But the most important symmetry of this remarkable man was that his many accomplishments were matched by an equally generous character. Roger loved people as much as he loved nature. His heart and home were open to guests from many fields of endeavor and every stratum of society, and as a result he was surrounded by loving and talented friends. First among them is his brilliant and beautiful wife, Dr. Olga Petrauskene, who he met and courted in Russia. He recognized and won her as a true consort, a respected biochemist like himself who shared his scientific training, his gift for playing and appreciating music, and his delight in a shared feast and a house full of laughter. Roger gave money to many charities, and he gave true charity to many people: His attention, his understanding, his support, and the time of his life that turned out in the end to be unexpectedly short. For those of us left behind, the transient gift of his person is all the more precious. Roger is survived by his beloved wife Olga; stepdaughter, Rasa Petrauskaite; mother, Sylvia T. O'Neill; sisters, Janet O'Neill and Eleanor O'Neill, and half-brother, Edward O'Neill. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to The Southern Poverty Law Center of Atlanta, Georgia or the Johns Hopkins Colon Cancer Center of Baltimore, Maryland.