Jacqueline A. Noonan

Abstract

I wish the Astronomer Royal had a star left to name Noonan. As I sorrow at the death of my beloved friend and mentor, Jackie Noonan, a warmer, perhaps more apt image comes to mindrising after the concert, performance ended, but forever enriched with melody and harmony of incandescent beauty. What follows is not a biography of a professional life, mentioned here only in outline, but a personal memorial of only 2 years in our lives. Jackie's and mine, a time long ago, when some of you were not yet born or had used your first stethoscope. At a distant but gracious motherhouse known and respected to this day as an outstanding medical school. We were both beginning our career, only 8 years apart in age, Jackie as a faculty member, myself on the brink of internship readying myself for life in Pediatrics, or more precisely-Pediatric Genetics. At that moment, now 60 years ago, Jackie Noonan came to Iowa City with profound, decisive, and lasting effect on me and on biology.