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An editorial appreciation of Paul Letourneau

This Special Issue of Developmental Neurobiology celebrates the many contributions of Paul Letourneau as a scientist, as a teacher and as a mentor on the occasion of his beginning the 65th year of his life. As expected for an early baby-boomer, he is reaching a milestone, but like many of us of a certain age, retirement is nowhere in the plans, and we are faced with a major decision: what to do as we face an increasingly tough competition for federal funds to run our laboratories? Fortunately, there are other ways in which we can contribute to the scientific enterprise, and Paul has been contributing in another way that I want to recognize here. Because our scientific interests overlap extensively, I, like others, have a great appreciation of Paul’s contributions to our understanding of the cytoskeletal and signaling basis of the regulation of neurites and growth cones. I also greatly appreciate him as a friend, as a distant colleague whom I can call for advice (we have never held positions closer than a few thousand miles), and an occasional collaborator in organizing a couple of great meetings. However, I do have one more reason to appreciate Paul, which is a consequence of my being an editor of this journal and having relied over the years on his strong and steady contributions to the Journal of Neurobiology/Developmental Neurobiology. Fifteen years ago, I invited Paul to join the Editorial Board of what was known then as the Journal of Neurobiology. Since then, he has reviewed over 50 manuscripts with thoroughness, fairness, and sound judgment, and with a quality particularly appreciated by an editor: punctuality. Moreover, he and his colleagues have published 13 articles in the Journal (Letourneau et al., 1991; Snow and Letourneau, 1992; Gomez et al., 1996; Oberstar et al., 1997; Gallo and Letourneau, 2000; Pond et al., 2002; Gallo and Letourneau, 2004; Adams et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2006; Blackmore and Letourneau, 2006a, b; Blackmore and Letourneau, 2007; Marsick et al., 2010), anchoring a strong presence by the Journal in the fields of growth-cone and process outgrowth. Finally, he has been Guest Editor (Letourneau and Macagno, 2000; Baas and Letourneau, 2004) of two very successful special issues reviewing these areas, one in August 2000 with me as a co-editor, and one in 2004 with Peter Baas. Hence, this ‘‘editorial’’ appreciation. Paul Letourneau has been a steady, creative and involved author, reviewer, and guest editor for the Journal of Neurobiology/Developmental Neurobiology over the past 15 years, and we want to recognize him and thank him profusely for his important contributions to our success.