1991

Thomas Elkins

Tom was killed by a drunk driver in Yosemite National Park on October 5,1989. The driver, John Rodney Mauldin, was indicted on a federal charge of gross vehicular manslaughter as well as felony drunk driving. Unfortunately, I do not know if he was ever convicted.

Thomas Turner Elkins received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1986, completing a dissertation on the "Electrophysiological Analyses of Drosophila Behavioral Mutants". At the time of his death, Tom was working at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California Berkeley. A promising young researcher, Elkins had a number of papers published posthumously. Several dedications and awards were established in Tom's name,including the Tom Elkins Memorial Lecture Award for graduate students working in any area of Drosophila neurobiology, presented at the biennial Neurobiology of Drosophila Conference.

Here is a link to an article that he published in 1990.