Washington

The body of Don Wiley, the prizewinning structural biologist who went missing in November, was found on 21 December. Hydroelectric workers spotted his body snagged on a tree in the Mississippi River, more than 450 kilometres downstream of the bridge near Memphis where his hire car was abandoned (see Nature 414, 475; 2001).

Wiley, a professor at Harvard University, had won a Lasker award and the Japan Prize for his work on the structure of major histocompatibility complex proteins, which are involved in immune responses. “This is devastating for his family and only slightly less so for our department,” says Harvard colleague Jack Strominger, who shared those awards.

Wiley had last been seen on 15 November at a dinner for St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, where he served as a member of its scientific advisory board. Those who were present are stunned by Wiley's death. He was “in great spirits, talking about science, art, politics and his family”, says William Evans, deputy director of the hospital. “To us who were with him and who knew him, we felt it was inconceivable that he could do any harm to himself.”

As Nature went to press, no autopsy information had been released.