In Memory of Professor Louis J. Guillette, Jr.
Louis Guillette was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, CoEE Endowed Chair of Marine Genomics, and Director of Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston. He died on Thursday, August 6, 2015, at the age of 60.
Lou Guillette is loved, remembered, and celebrated by his family, students, postdocs, colleagues, and friends. He lived a full life of generosity, creativity, and adventure. Among his many accomplishments, Lou Guillette published nearly 300 papers, 43 book chapters, and 5 books. He mentored 36 Ph.D. students, 14 postdoctoral fellows, 17 Master's students, and over 100 undergraduates. He was a master teacher. Lou's reach extended all over the world through productive and ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central and South America. Lou worked at the frontiers of integrative science, connecting genetic, physiological, chemical, and environmental data to make new discoveries that linked environmental conditions to the reproductive health of wildlife and people.
Lou Guillette is best known for his research on endocrine disruption in alligators and other wildlife species. One of his great legacies will be his ability to transcend traditional boundaries between disciplines. Working with medical colleagues, he showed how observations of reproductive failure and endocrine dysregulation in wildlife are also occurring in people. He taught, “If the environmental is not healthy for alligators, then it's probably not healthy for us.” Lou was gifted with imagination to construct new possibilities when current views did not explain observations. Additionally, he embraced variance as a critical characteristic of the natural world and steadfastly attempted to understand rather than remove or minimize it. His open-mindedness and cross-disciplinary knowledge empowered Lou to be innovative and perceptive. With these skills, Lou regularly pushed the envelope of scientific knowledge to understand how contaminants affect organisms, how those effects ripple through ecosystems, and how they impact human health and well-being.
Lou Guillette's meteoric scientific trajectory began in 1981 when he won the Annual Creative Dissertation Award at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His dissertation on reproductive strategies and the evolution of viviparity in Sceloporus aeneus lizards was co-directed by Dick Jones and Hobart Smith. At Lou's memorial service, Professor Jones described Lou as an unusually productive graduate student who completed both his Master's and Ph.D. degrees in just five years.
Lou's productivity and accomplishments remained on an upward trajectory throughout his career. His first tenure track position was at Wichita State University in Kansas, where he mentored his early graduate students. In 1985, he was appointed to the faculty at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Lou was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997, selected as the University of Florida Teacher/Scholar of the Year in 1998, and promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2001. From 2001 through 2015, Lou was recognized as an ISI Highly Cited Research Scientist in Ecology and Environmental Biology. He was named an HHMI Professor by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2006. Lou harnessed his prestigious Professor's award to create and build the UF-HHMI GATOR science mentoring program. GATOR stands for Group Advantaged Training of Research, reflecting Lou's philosophy of teamwork in research, an innovative model he used consistently with his students. The GATOR program was ground-breaking in that it emphasized equally the skills of mentoring, communication, scientific philosophy, and research in the education of young scientists.
In 2010, Lou Guillette was recruited as the CoEE Endowed Chair in Marine Genomics at the Medical University of South Carolina and Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston. At MUSC, he was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Professor of Public Health Sciences, Director of the Center for Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Science, and Director of the SmartState Center for Marine Genomics. The move characterized his tirelessness and love for taking on new challenges in advancing the field of environmental health. In Charleston, Lou established a large and interdisciplinary team consisting of graduate and medical students, postdoctoral fellows, medical fellows, basic scientists, physicians, wildlife biologists, and analytical chemists, all focused on understanding the direct connections between the health of women and children and the health of their environment. Today, this diverse team continues to be inspired by Lou's vision of aligning multiple fields to address complex problems. In recognition of Lou's tremendous accomplishments as a scientist, mentor, and teacher, he was awarded the Heinz Award for the Environment (Heinz Science Medal) in 2011.
Lou Guillette fundamentally contributed to the founding, vision, and growth of Environmental Endocrine Disruption as a field. When he started his job at the University of Florida, he was asked by scientists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to help solve the mystery of very low hatching rates observed in some Florida alligator populations. Lou recognized the connection between elevated contaminant exposure in alligators, altered endocrine function, and reproductive abnormalities. His research augmented basic knowledge of alligator biology while creating an in-depth model for understanding the effects of contaminants in the wild.
This latter scientific contribution is particularly noteworthy because wild organisms are challenging experimental subjects. Certainly alligators have sharp teeth and resist capture, but these obstacles are trivial. The difficulty is that, compared with rodent or human research, few molecular tools are available for work with non-model species - tools like antibodies, gene sequences, and diagnostic kits. In Lou's laboratory, these tools were developed in house or with the help of knowledgeable collaborators. Additionally, wild organisms (and the human population) generally have high genotypic and phenotypic variance, compared with more standardized and homogenous laboratory rodents or cell lines. High intrinsic variance and unusual data distributions can make analyses and interpretation difficult. On the other hand, results arising from non-standard distributions of physiological traits led Lou and his students towards novel ideas and a better understanding of the significance of biological diversity and adaptability. For example, Lou and two of his graduate students discovered the timing of alligator puberty thanks to a dataset with high variance.
Lou Guillette viewed his mentoring of students and postdocs as his most important contribution to science. He had exceptional skills as a mentor and a wonderful ability to communicate scientific ideas. There is no doubt that Lou's global perspective and stories of adventure were a magnet for students and made his laboratory a lively and spirited place. To work with Lou was to be guided on a life-changing journey into the heart and soul of scientific research. His students became part of something larger than themselves, an academic family linked with laboratories all over the world, gathered in the common pursuit of comparative and field-based scientific inquiry. Lou's students and postdocs have gone on to careers in academics, government, industry, non-profits, and medicine. They carry forward his influence and philosophy and will continue to build on his legacy.
If you asked Lou Guillette what it meant to be a scientist, he would say that it is the “four best jobs on Earth.” The following is an excerpt, written by one of Lou's former graduate students, that reflects Lou's philosophy and his ability to inspire. This is what he would tell his students.
“To be a scientist is to be an adventurer, a detective, an artist, and a storyteller. As an adventurer, you will break new ground, discover things no one else has discovered, and see things no one else has seen. As a detective, you will seek out the evidence and build your case. You will look in unlikely places and notice the small details that will matter later. As an artist, you will create new ways of seeing the world. You will find beauty you did not know existed and you will use your hands and mind to shape tomorrow's knowledge. As a storyteller, you will weave together the history, adventure, evidence, and innovation of your discoveries to teach and inspire others. With these wonderful opportunities comes great responsibility. Good research requires honesty, open-mindedness, and fairness. Good researchers continuously seek the truth while understanding that truth can change depending on experience and perspective. Success will depend on your ability to simultaneously believe in yourself and ask more from yourself. And, like all who venture into the unknown, there will come a time when you are tired, hungry, discouraged, or lost. At these times, understand that you have within yourself the will to move forward, the guidance of mentors to help you, and the friendship of colleagues gained along the way.”
As Lou's students and postdocs, we want to thank him for his exceptional leadership and willingness to share his wisdom, philosophy, and experience. Through a remarkable combination of inspiration, education, challenge, and invitation, Lou helped us develop scientific creativity and confidence. He introduced us to other scientists and ensured that we published. Lou was generous and kind and took great care to support us intellectually and financially. Of particular note, Lou employed and mentored two graduate students and two postdoctoral fellows during pregnancy and the early years of motherhood, thus ensuring their continued scientific development and career advancement.
In the Guillette Lab, we learned the experimental paradigm of comparing animals from polluted sites that impair proper development and function to those from reference sites that more closely resemble healthy and productive natural habitats. We employed this paradigm throughout our training and it fundamentally shaped our world-views and scientific careers. With Lou's passing, we realize that the training and mentorship thoughtfully given by Lou has become our career “reference site.” He provided the example against which we continually compare our own professional endeavors. He is the benchmark against which we gauge the quality, thoroughness, creativity, and care we give to our research and our own mentoring of the next generation of scientists.
We are honored to be part of the Lou Guillette academic family. We will miss him deeply.
Thea M. Edwards
The University of the South, Sewanee, TN
931-598-3167
Brandon C. Moore
The University of the South, Sewanee, TN
Edward F. Orlando
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Alison M. Roark
Furman University, Greenville, SC
Matthew R. Milnes
Mars Hill University, NC
Satomi Kohno
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Benjamin B. Parrott,
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Kevin S. Baldwin
Monmouth College, IL
Jacqueline Bangma
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Tamatha Barbeau
Francis Marion University, SC
Dieldrich S. Bermudez
S.C. Johnson, Racine, WI
Melissa C. Bernhard
Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, FL
Ashley S. P. Boggs
National Institute of Standards and Technology, SC
Hannes Botha
Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency, University of Limpopo, South Africa
Nicole L. Botteri
US Environmental Protection Agency, NC
John A. Bowden
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
John W. Brock
Warren Wilson College, NC
Teresa Bryan
University of Florida
Theresa Cantu
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Scott Clayman
Gainesville, Florida
D. Andrew Crain
Maryville College, TN
Lori Cruze
Wofford College, SC
Elizabeth Davis
Butler University, IN
Thomas Galligan
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Jane Girling
University of Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Mark P. Gunderson
The College of Idaho
Matthew Hale
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Heather J. Hamlin
University of Maine, Orono
Iske V. Larkin
University of Florida
Russell H. Lowers
Kennedy Space Center, FL
Alexis Marianes
Medical University of South Carolina
Amanda Jezek Martinot
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, MA
Greg R. Masson
US Fish & Wildlife Service, Atlanta, GA
John M. Matter
Juniata College, PA
Jessica A. McCoy
Medical University of South Carolina
Krista A. McCoy
East Carolina University, NC
Nicole A. McNabb
College of Charleston, SC
Jenny Gates Medina
Medtronic Xomed, Inc., Jacksonville, FL
Jan Myburgh
University of Pretoria, South Africa
Frances M. Nilsen
Medical University of South Carolina, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Hollings Marine Lab, SC
Brent D. Palmer
University of Kentucky
Daniel Pickford
Jealotts Hill International Research Centre, Syngenta, United Kingdom
Thomas R. Rainwater
Clemson University, SC
Matthew S. Rand
Carleton College, MN
Andrew A. Rooney
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences/National Toxicology Program, NC
Jeremy Skotko
Emergency Medicine, SC
Melissa L. Sokolosky
Medical University of South Carolina
Stephen E. Somerville
Shealy Environmental Services, Inc., SC
Alexis Temkin
Medical University of South Carolina, Hollings Marine Laboratory, SC
Christopher W. Tubbs
San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, CA
Abby G. Wenzel
Medical University of South Carolina
Catharine Cox Whiting
University of North Georgia, Gainesville
Cameron Williams
College of Charleston, SC
Allan R. Woodward
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission