When Dr Bairoch was in Colombia in 2013, I remember an uncomplicated & humble man but brilliant. His professional path and his only presence were an inspiration for me. Scientific world will remember him.

It is hard to believe that Amos is no longer with us. An amazing scientist, a beautiful person, a solid presence that created much of what we do and how we think today.

Amos and I met when we were both scruffy looking graduate students in 1984 and our computer programs were being shown in adjacent company booths as Amos has described:

https://www.academia.edu/2958783/Serendipity_in_bioinformatics_the_tribulations_of_a_Swiss_bioinformatician_through_exciting_times_?source=swp_share

Among the sea of people in suits and ties, we each noticed the other long haired guy …

I first "met" Amos by phone in 1988. I was a post-doc in Dublin and had just published the first version of Clustal for PCs. The phone rang and I answered and was hit by an avalanche of ideas and words and greetings. It was Amos in full flow. He wanted to include Clustal in his recently released sequence analysis package PC Gene and we discussed algorithms and methods and software for about a…

Amos was a precursor in the truest sense of the word. He built things before there was a name for the field, before recognition or metrics, simply because he felt they needed to exist for science to move forward.

What always struck me was the complete absence of hidden agenda. His choices were guided by clarity of purpose and intellectual honesty. This earned him deep trust across the community.

Bey…

Amos was not only a giant of bioinformatics and biocuration, but one of the nicest people I've met in academia. His support and advice were invaluable when we were establishing our own database projects, and I will always remember how warmly he welcomed us to SIB when I arrived in Switzerland 20 years ago. We miss him as individuals and as a community.