DEATHS

ROLE MODEL. Chinese biochemist Chen-Lu Tsou, who helped synthesize bovine insulin and later campaigned against academic misconduct, died on 23 November in Beijing after a battle with lymphoma. He was 83.

Educated at Cambridge, Tsou led a Chinese team in the 1950s that joined the A and B chains of bovine insulin, which paved the way for the total chemical synthesis of the protein in 1965. He resumed research after the Cultural Revolution ended in the mid-1970s, tackling questions such as how enzymes work.
Tsou also spoke out against academic misconduct in China, most famously, exposing a Chinese-American researcher who gained the trust of political leaders to back his dubious work using messenger RNA to influence goldfish development. Pei Gang, director of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, calls Tsou "my role model as an excellent scientist with a high moral standard and social conscience."