Paul G. Allen (1953–2018)

On 15 October, Paul G. Allen died after a 9-year battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was 65. Often dressed in a timeless blue shirt and dark pants, the cofounder of Microsoft and investor in myriad domains didn't stand out by appearance; in conversation, he was soft-spoken and reserved. What stood out about Paul was his insatiable curiosity, vision, breadth of knowledge, and generosity. Throughout his life, he focused on identifying big problems and making a difference. His push to move us out of our comfort zone and focus on scientific horizons appearing just beyond reach will be greatly missed. Paul was born in 1953, in Seattle, Washington. His father was associate director of the University of Washington Libraries. He attended Lakeside School where he met Bill Gates, who was 2 years younger. The two became passionate about computing, which was done on the large mainframes that were seen as the future of the field. Paul took his perfect SAT score to Washington State University for college but dropped out after 2 years and moved to Boston to work near Bill, who was attending Harvard. In 1974, the cover of an upcoming issue of Popular Electronics showed the Altair 8800, touted as the world's first microcomputer. Paul rushed over to show it to Bill and quickly envisioned that this could lead to a computer on every desk. Struck by the potential opportunities, Bill dropped out of school as well. Whereas most of the interest at the time was in improving the hardware, Paul and Bill saw the need for software that would democratize computing, making the computer accessible to everyone and allowing it to play a pervasive role in writing, communication, and accounting. They launched Microsoft in 1975, and in 1981 their operating system was adapted by IBM for its new personal computer. In 1983, Paul was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and retired from Microsoft. He formed Vulcan, Inc., in 1986. The privately held company oversaw his wide swath of business and philanthropic activities, which reflected his passions. These included pop culture (Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP), music (Upstream Music Fest), art (Seattle Art Fair), sports (Seattle Seahawks, Portland Trail Blazers, and Seattle Sounders FC), movies (Cinerama), film (Vulcan Productions), airplanes (Stratolaunch and Flying Heritage Collection), the environment, and climate and conservation. All of these endeavors were marked by Paul's desire to do it differently and make a big impact. Paul also funded a multitude of scientific initiatives, including the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Allen Institute for Cell Science, the Allen Distinguished Investigators, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, along with diverse workshops. All such ventures focused on fundamental questions about the nature of computations and the inherent complexity of living systems. The guiding principles of his initiatives included team science and open science. The Allen institutes diverged from the typical academic university or institute, practicing industrial-scale science with clearly specified objectives and time lines. In the early 2000s, for example, the Allen Institute for Brain Science introduced large-scale team science to create an atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain. The atlas was presented in an easily accessible and useful format, providing a unique resource for the neuroscience community. ![][1] PHOTO: COURTESY OF VULCAN, PHOTO BY KEVIN CRUFF Paul had a passion for science; had life played out differently, he might have been a professor at a university. He was always pushing for “big ideas” and “ways in.” He was deeply interested in unlocking the mysteries of wildly complex processes, pressing us to address the “unsolved mysteries” and find the “codes” in biological sciences. His interests spanned from brains to cells, evolution to artificial intelligence, and elephants to oceans, areas in which he took both an intellectual and personal interest. Paul was most animated when a small group of colleagues was circling around a new idea, something he had spurred as part of his uncanny ability to question dogma. A visit to his office often ended up at the whiteboard, which we would fill with diagrams of cellular processes. He was right there at the board with us, drawing ideas and pacing. And there on the windowsill sat elephant statues and awards for discoveries and films, reminding us all of the vast range of concerns he had for living things and for science. His style was to engage small groups of experts in charrettes (multiday planning meetings), listening intently to the arguments for and against various ideas and approaches. Once a topic was chosen and a plan developed, it would be presented to Paul, who then asked the hard questions about feasibility, strategic advantage, risks, and alternative approaches. He entered these meetings well prepared: Rather than have us simply recapitulate the plan, he went right to the few key ideas, asking for embellishment and clarity. He would ask “How will we know if we're successful?” and “Is this the right time?” His approach drove a discipline of thought and focus that spurred the success of his many endeavors. In these meetings, Paul showed his enormous intellectual breadth and creativity as he looked for new ways to think about the problem, conjoin disciplines, and penetrate deeply into the topic. Although we only saw Paul occasionally, he emailed often, at nearly any time of the day or night. He sent articles he had read or asked about talks he had heard. The emails came with questions about our thoughts, how we could make a difference, what the roadblocks would be, or how much it would cost. It is comforting to know that what Paul started will live on through the research and discovery enterprises he fostered and through the people in whom he invested. We wish we had had more time with him; he never shied away from pushing us to think big and tackle unsolved mysteries in science. Paul always reminded us, as he wrote in his 1 April 2016 Editorial in Science , that “all of us—philanthropists, governments, universities, and private companies alike—must invest much more in basic, fundamental science and in the intrepid scientists who are willing to pursue out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge.” [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif