On Friday, 15 August 2014, Enoch Callaway III or ‘Noch’ as his many friends and colleagues called him, passed away peacefully with his family present at his tranquil hilltop home in Tiburon, California. Noch was a founding member of the ACNP and so much more. Noch was born in LaGrange, Georgia, 90 years ago into one of the eminent families of the Old South (he told me that his many conservative family members thought he was wildly eccentric and much too liberal). The Callaway family legacy extends from Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia, to Callaway Golf Clubs and the Callaway Vineyards. Noch chose a different path so the Callaway legacy is now no more evident than in Noch’s accomplishments and support for those of us pursuing an in-depth understanding of the causes and treatments of serious brain disorders. Noch was a constant presence and intellectual leader of our field at UC San Francisco’s Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute for half a century.

Noch Callaway, along with several other leading psychiatrists, led the charge in the mid- to late 20th century to transform academic psychiatry from a backwater discipline focused on unproven therapies that was largely ignored in Medical Schools (and by the NIH), into a dynamic, expanding melding of the best of neuroscience and clinical psychiatry. Noch’s incredible generosity of spirit, intellectual prowess, unabiding curiosity, and honesty were hallmarks of this true Renaissance man. He served as a model of the self-effacing but distinguished academician in search of truth. Noch was distinguished in demeanor with his misleadingly conservative Brooks Brothers suits, but he had an incredibly playful, humorous, and informal persona. His life was full of interesting pursuits: from his scientific leadership in information processing and brain–behavioral relationships to windsurfing off the Tiburon–Belvedere coast of San Francisco Bay (an endeavor he took up in his 60s).

Noch’s lab meetings, like the man, were extraordinary. The many scientists who were fortunate enough to have trained with Noch or to visit him for extended periods of time from around the globe were also fortunate enough to go to his lab meetings. One week, there would be a very detailed discussion of how to properly wire the PDP computer so that it could accurately filter and record EEG data in order to obtain the most sensitive and reliable responses possible at the time. These seminal studies established the P300 as an index of the apportionment of attentional and cerebral cortical resources to information processing in normal subjects and schizophrenia patients. And the next week? Well he might be host to Physics Professors from UC Berkeley discussing the influence of consciousness on the cosmos. Or visitors would drop by from Big Sur’s legendary Esalen Institute Consciousness Retreat. The San Francisco Bay area was a beehive of intellectual, scientific, and consciousness expansion, and Noch was a leader of this exciting revolution in the exploration of brain–behavior relationships, centered around schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders.

Later, Noch’s free Psychopharmacology Clinic for the poor and disadvantaged continued after his retirement from UCSF and reflected his admirable social values. Noch’s life stands as a tribute to trying to reach out, and help patients with no-fault clinical brain disorders. His accomplishments as a Founding Member of the ACNP and President of the Society of Biological Psychiatry helped to propel our field to heights that were almost unimaginable in the 1950s and early 1960s. But beyond these accomplishments, Noch’s warm smile, dry humor, and goodwill were his hallmarks and will be sorely missed by all those who benefited from knowing a man whose kindness, intellectual curiosity, and willingness to explore new frontiers of neuroscience research were unbounded.

Noch’s life was also permeated by his goodwill, humor, optimism for the future, and true ‘Gemeinschaftsgefuehl,’ Alfred Adler’s idea of community spiritedness. From LaGrange Georgia to Columbia University and then UCSF/Langler Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, Noch left indelible footprints of intellectual prowess and simple human decency. I believe that it is unlikely that we will have another Noch Callaway in our current diverse and expanding world of the neuropsychiatric and genomic evolution. Noch would be the first to dispute this view with his characteristic modesty and zen-like, self-effacing attitude. I do know that my email Inbox was flooded with tributes to Noch when people learned of his demise (e.g. ‘A real giant. Lost’ from Ken Davis). I believe that he would smilingly dismiss the many tributes he has received and turn the spotlight on to others. He was a man who combined rare intellectual abilities, humanism, and humor. A real giant: gone but not forgotten.