Stanley J. Korsmeyer, MD, passed away on March 31, 2005, at the age of 54 after a courageous battle with lung cancer. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois in 1972. Later, a James Scholar and research honors program participant, he graduated from the University of Illinois Medical School in 1976. Following his internship and residency at the University of California, San Francisco, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in 1982. His work in hematology, oncology, immunology, and genetics made him a respected leader in the field of apoptosis, or programmed cell death. He was an HHMI investigator at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, a scientific advisor to IDUN Pharmaceutical, Inc., a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Institute of Medicine and was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In addition, he was a recipient of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for distinguished achievement in cancer research, the Charles S. Mott Prize of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, the 2000 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the first annual Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's de Villiers International Achievement Award, the International Award for Cancer Research from the Pezcoller Foundation and the American Association for Cancer Research, and Harvard Medical School's A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2004. He also published over 250 research articles and was a frequent keynote speaker at various meetings.