Joachim W Messing

1946 - 2019

1946 - 2019
Joachim (Jo) Messing, the Selman A. Waksman Professor of Molecular Genetics, University Distinguished Professor, and director of the Waksman Institute at Rutgers University, died at age 73. Messing made pioneering and foundational contributions that underpin the modern fields of genetics, genomics, and evolutionary biology. He invented "shotgun" sequencing of DNA, an approach that vastly empowered the advance of the genomic era of biology. The tools he created and distributed widely without restrictions put the sequencing of DNA in everyone's hands and led to its automation and in time its industrialization. His work was transformative globally in agriculture, medicine, and the basic sciences. Messing's contributions enabled genome sequencing from viruses to humans. In the life sciences, every company from seeds to pharmaceuticals, every university research laboratory, owe their origins, their methods, their products and their success to the inventive mind, and his remarkable generosity. He was the most highly cited author in all of the sciences in the decade of the 1980s.
Messing was born in Duisburg, Germany on September 10th, 1946 to Martha and Heinrich Messing, the eldest of three children. He was inquisitive and determined, twice traveling around the world before the age of 25, and the first in the family to go to college. While earning a B.S. in pharmacy, he developed a passion for opera while working nights at the Deutsche Opera am Rhein. 1971 was a pivotal year in his life; after an M.S. in Pharmacology, he met the love of his life Rita and began his doctoral studies under Feodor Lynen and Peter Hofschneider at the Max Planck Institute for Cellular Chemistry in München. In 1975 he and Rita married and he received his doctorate degree from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1978 he moved to UCDavis as a research associate. 1980 he joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota. He arrived at Rutgers University in 1985 as research director of the Waksman Institute and in 1988 became its director. At Rutgers, Messing participated in innumerable ways that benefited and contributed to the university's growth and stature. He led a highly productive laboratory, most notably sequencing the genomes of several crop species (maize, rice, sorghum). He held this position till the time of his death on September 13th, 2019.
Messing was the recipient of many honors. To name a few he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded Wolf Prize in Agriculture in Israel, oft considered the equivalent of the Nobel prize in Agriculture.
Messing is survived by his wife Rita, son Simon and wife Lisa; and three grandchildren, Daniel, Lukas, Henry. He is also survived by sister Angelika; a devoted staff; and many colleagues and friends.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Joachim Messing Memorial Fund by contacting Waksman Institute. For more information, contact Erin Sorge at 848-445-4256 or esorge@waksman.rutgers.edu.