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1
SENATE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to
3learn of the death of Klaus Schulten, who passed away on
4October 31, 2016; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten was born on January 12, 1947 in
6Recklinghausen, Germany; and
 
7    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten earned a degree in physics from the
8University of Muenster in 1969 and obtained his Ph.D. in
9chemical physics from Harvard University in 1974; he served as
10a physics professor at the Technical University of Munich
11before joining the University of Illinois Department of Physics
12as a faculty member in 1988; and
 
13    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten led a team of more than 30 students
14and postdoctoral scientists in the Theoretical and
15Computational Biophysics Group, which he founded at the Beckman
16Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in 1989; with a
17background in chemical physics and a keen understanding of the
18potential of powerful computers to model biological structures
19and the physics and chemistry that drives them, he led the
20development of software that enables scientists around the
21world to observe how molecules behave and interact at the
22atomic scale, including the program VMD for the interactive

 

 

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1display, animation, and analysis of large biomolecules, and the
2large-scale molecular dynamics simulation program NAMD, which
3accounts for the moment-by-moment chemical interactions of as
4many as 100 million atoms, with time steps on the order of a
5millionth of a billionth of a second; he also built a
6computational microscope that captures the mechanisms of
7biomolecules in action; and
 
8    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten built his own parallel computer
9before they were available commercially and was among the first
10scientists to use the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National
11Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of
12Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and
 
13    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten and his group were responsible for
14fundamental contributions to numerous areas of biology, most
15recently to understanding photosynthesis, force generation in
16cells, membrane channel dynamics, and large-scale cellular
17organization; he and his colleagues revealed the precise
18chemical structure of the HIV capsid, teased out new details of
19the dynamic assembly of the ribosome, and contributed to a
20deeper understanding of the chemistry of odor detection; he
21also studied the magnetic field effect on migratory birds; and
 
22    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten was a Swanlund Professor of
23Physics; he served as director for the NIH Center for

 

 

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1Macromolecular Modeling at the Beckman Institute and was
2co-director of the NSF Center for the Physics of Living Cells;
3he was also affiliated with the Department of Chemistry and the
4Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology; he trained
5over 77 graduate students in physics, biophysics, and chemistry
6while at the University of Illinois; and
 
7    WHEREAS, Klaus Schulten is survived by his wife, Zan
8Luthey-Schulten; his daughter, Charlotte Schulten (Dr. S. Case
9Bradford); his brother, Christoph Schulten; and his sister,
10Karin Balmer; therefore, be it
 
11    RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL
12ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we, along with his
13family and friends, mourn the passing of Klaus Schulten; and be
14it further
 
15    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
16presented to the family of Klaus Schulten as an expression of
17our sympathy.