Gilman D. Veith (1944–2013) – A dedication

With the passing of Dr Gilman D. Veith on 18 August 2013 the QSAR community lost one of its true visionaries. His career spanned more than four decades, during which he repeatedly demonstrated vision and leadership at both national and international level. His ability to transform the vision of QSAR applied to toxicology has transformed the science from one focused on ‘statistical black boxes’ to one based on transparent mechanistic chemistry and biology. Gil was a pioneer of the application of QSAR to industrial chemicals, which traditionally lacked the experimental data already available for pesticides and pharmaceuticals. His lifelong vision and leadership in QSAR were recognized by a number of awards, among them the International QSAR Award in 1998. He exerted an enduring influence on the QSAR community and was a keynote speaker at a number of national and international conferences and workshops. Perhaps the best demonstration of his scientific insight into the scope of the problems facing the QSAR community was his presentation on 9 May 2004 in Liverpool, UK, at the 11th International Workshop on Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships in the Human Health and Environmental Sciences (QSAR 2004): On the nature, evolution and future of quantitative structure–activity relationships (QSAR) in toxicology. Born and raised in Minnesota, Gil received his undergraduate education at Augustana College in South Dakota and was later awarded a PhD in Water Chemistry by the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970, where he became a member of the faculty and in 1972 he joined the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) research laboratory in Duluth, Minnesota. Once the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) had become law in 1976, Gil was presented with his lifelong mission of addressing the potential risks of chemicals for which at the time little or no empirical data was available. He was fascinated by the relationship between molecular structure and physico-chemical properties, bioavailability, bioconcentration and toxicity, both in the context of the environment and of human health. Gil was one of the first to appreciate that the need for data for such assessments was outstripping the means for generating it – for example, under the constraints of TSCA the USEPA was required to work within a 90-day time frame for pre-marketing notification, often with little more than a molecular structure to work with. As early as 1980 his vision was the development of a long-term multidisciplinary approach to predictive toxicology, in which chemistry, toxicology, ecology, physiology and modeling would be integrated to develop predictive models within the framework of a knowledge-based expert system. Under Gil’s leadership scientists throughout the world were enlisted to assist in this undertaking. It is a tribute to him that he was able to inspire a diverse array of established