Harvard professor missing

By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff and Jenny Jiang Globe Correspondent, 11/21/2001

A world-renowned Harvard scientist and expert in highly contagious and deadly viruses mysteriously disappeared in Tennessee early last Friday, leaving a rental car on a Memphis bridge.

Don C. Wiley was in town to visit relatives and attend the annual meeting of the scientific advisory board of St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. Police said there were no signs of foul play, just the car with the keys in the ignition on a bridge that spans the Mississippi River. Police found the car five hours after Wiley left a dinner at a posh hotel several blocks from the bridge.

''This is totally unexpected. He was fine on Thursday night,'' said Dr. Joseph Mirro, executive vice president at St. Jude's Hospital.

The disappearance of the popular, gregarious scientist has shaken the scientific board and the staff and directors of the hospital, Mirro said.

''This is a terrible event and a great loss to the scientific community,'' he added, assuming the worst. ''He is an extremely brilliant scientist in medicine and understanding biology.''

In Cambridge, Wiley's wife, Katrin Valgeirsdottir, said she was planning to fly down on Friday to meet her 57-year-old husband with their children, ages 7 and 10. He also has two other children, ages 26 and 34, she said.

''He would never vanish. He wouldn't commit suicide,'' she said. ''I have no idea what has happened.''

An award-winning professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Harvard, Wiley built the first model of the structures of influenza viruses and human cells that allow the disease organism to infect humans.

In 1985, Wiley began researching how drugs might block the process, using a method called X-ray crystallography, in hopes of conquering maladies ranging from the common cold to HIV.

The researcher for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard had flown to Memphis Wednesday evening, police said, and stayed with his father in Germantown, a suburb. Wiley's brother and sister-in-law also live in the area.

On Thursday, Wiley met with the other 14 members of the board, and was one of 150 people attending a dinner that evening.

Memphis police Lieutenant Joe Scott said that witnesses described him as being in a good mood when he left the dinner.

''No one detected that he was despondent or was having any difficulties in any way,'' Scott said.

At 4 a.m. Friday, police found Wiley's rented Mitsubishi Galant on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which links Tennessee to Arkansas.

Memphis police said the doors were unlocked, the key was in the ignition, and the hazard lights had not been turned on. The car had a full tank of gas.

Scott said the bridge is about 100 feet high, and has been the scene of a handful of suicides each year. Sometimes the bodies aren't found for weeks, he said.

''We are investigating every angle we can think of,'' Scott said.

Wiley's research focuses on the structure of viruses and proteins in the human immune system.

Herman Eisen, an MIT professor emeritus and friend of Wiley's, said suicide ''just doesn't fit.'' Wiley ''was extremely successful at what he did. He seemed stable and outgoing, he ran a large research group very effectively. People held him in very high regard.''

Globe correspondents Fran Riley and Jana Benscoter contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001

Answers

gut feeling...he did NOT jump!

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001

Police search for Harvard professor

By Associated Press

November 24, 2001, 4:42 PM EST

BOSTON -- The FBI is monitoring the investigation into the disappearance of a Harvard biologist because of his research into potentially lethal viruses, including Ebola.

Dr. Don C. Wiley, 57, was last seen in Memphis, Tenn., where he attended the annual meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. His car was found on Nov. 16 on a bridge over the Mississippi River, with a full fuel tank and the key in the ignition.

Wiley had left the Peabody Hotel just four hours before the rental car was discovered. He was supposed to have met his wife and two children that same day in Cambridge, Mass.

FBI agents took an interest in Wiley's disappearance because of his expertise and "given our state of affairs post-Sept. 11," FBI agent William Woerner in Memphis told The Boston Globe.

Wiley, a Harvard biochemistry and biophysics professor, is considered a national expert on Ebola, HIV and influenza. Ebola is a highly contagious virus that kills 50 to 90 percent of its victims; there is no vaccine.

In 1999, Wiley and another Harvard professor, Dr. Jack Strominger, won the Japan Prize for their discoveries of how the immune system protects humans from infections.

Wiley's wife, Karen Valgeirsdottir, doesn't think his disappearance is related to his work because most of it is available in books and on the Internet.

"That just doesn't seem plausible," she said.

Wiley's sister-in-law, Susan Wiley, who lives in the Memphis area, has said it is uncharacteristic for Wiley not to leave a note. Days before his disappearance, he left a note for his 85-year-old father telling him when he planned to return from a jog, she said.

Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001