Nicholas Howe, a professor of English and a leading scholar of Anglo-Saxon England, died of complications from leukemia on September 27 in Oakland. He was 53.

His works include The Old English Catalogue Poems: A Study in Poetic Form and the influential Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England, which pioneered new ways of looking at Old English literature and culture.

Howe's new book, Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Cultural Geography, will be published by Yale University Press in 2007. Including his latest research on the writings of Bede, an English monk and author who lived 1,300 years ago; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ancient annals tracing the history of the Anglo-Saxons; and the epic poem Beowulf, it was the focus of his work during a year's Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002-2003.

As director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Ohio State University, where he taught before joining the Berkeley faculty in 2003, Howe also edited several collections of essays on topics in medieval culture. He was named a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, the organization's top honor, in 2005.

His most recently published book, Across an Inland Sea: Writing in Place from Buffalo to Berlin (2003), combined personal memoir and travel writing, and was illustrated by his own photographs. A Los Angeles Times reviewer observed that with this book, "Howe joins a lineage of well-loved writers, from Henry James to Jan Morris and W.G. Sebald, who wrote about place as a state of mind."

"He wrote movingly and memorably not only on medieval literature, but also on hyenas and unipeds, on metaphor in American political discourse, on construction cranes, on Italo Calvino, C.P. Cavafy, and Joan Didion, on fast-food America, on the desert landscape of Oklahoma, and on the academic profession, all in graceful, fluent prose," said Roberta Frank, a Yale University professor of English.

Central to his scholarship, Frank said, was a fascination with language, landscape, and North American culture. "In article after article, 'The Afterlife of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,' 'The Cultural Construction of Reading,' 'An Angle on this Earth: Senses of Place in Anglo-Saxon England,' 'Beowulf in the House of Dickens,' and 'What We Talk About When We Talk about Style,' he opened up new areas for investigation and wonder," Frank said.

Howe earned his B.A. in English at York University in Toronto in 1974 and his Ph.D. in English from Yale in 1978. He was appointed assistant professor in Rutgers University's English Department in 1978, then left to become an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma in 1985. In 1991, he became a full professor at Ohio State, where he became director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, which he built into a nationally-recognized program.

"His colleagues feel his loss keenly," said Anne Middleton, a Berkeley professor of English. "His intuitive wisdom about the larger institutional enterprise has made him a trusted and treasured colleague, mentor, friend, research interlocutor, and partner in learning. It will be a smaller and poorer place without him."

Family members and colleagues noted that Howe's love of life—good food, good wine, good books, entertaining, travel, and good friends—was contagious, and they admired his honesty, courage, and thoughtfulness.

Survivors include his widow, Georgina Kleege, of Berkeley, and sister, Nina Howe, of Montreal.

A memorial service will be held on campus in coming months.

Kleege requests that donations in Howe's memory be made to the Leukemia Research Foundation (leukemia-research.org), Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic in Princeton, NJ (rfbd.org), or the Dictionary of Old English at the University of Toronto (doe.utoronto.ca).

Dr. Anthony "Tony" V. Carrano, a highly respected pioneer of the international Human Ge- nome Project and past president of the Environmental Mutagen Society, died on Oct. 10, 2005.

Born in New York City in 1942, he received his B.S. in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After serving in Vietnam as a captain in the Marine Corps, he and his family moved to California, where he obtained a master's and Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1972. He then joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1973 until his retirement in 2000.

Throughout his career, Dr. Carrano remained an accomplished researcher and productive scientist. His resume totals more than 150 publications, with contributions in the fields of cytogenetics, genetic toxicology, food mutagens, DNA repair, gene mapping, DNA sequencing, and genomic biotechnologies. In addition, he was a respected contributor and official on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals. He was always viewed as an expert and as a source of guidance to colleagues.

He championed the importance of biotechnology in the assessment of human health. In 1984, an international meeting of molecular geneticists evaluated the potential for DNA-oriented methods to detect heritable mutations in the children of persons who survived the atom bombs in Japan. The problem was so daunting that large-scale, detailed sequencing of the entire human genome was proposed to answer it. Dr. Carrano was a leader in the efforts to launch the Human Genome Project in conjunction with the NIH to tackle this problem. The Human Genome Project primed the pump for this bioscience revolution.

"Tony was an outstanding scientist, an insightful leader, and a gentleman," said Michael Anastasio, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. One of Dr. Carrano's research colleagues wrote, "Tony's combination of being able to be firm but at the same time inclusive and humorous was rare and very effective. He enlisted people with his enthusiasm and like him we rolled up our sleeves and worked hard. Truly a fine leader."

Dr. Carrano was an exceptional advocate of science education, holding academic titles at several California universities and participating in numerous academic activities. In addition, he devoted much of his time to St. Michael's Church in Livermore as well as to local schools. He led by example and provided inspiration to many.