B6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022
obituariestechnique they had already de-
veloped for somatostatin.
“We used the same method,
simply writing out — and then
making — a gene coding for
human insulin,” Dr. Riggs said.
They succeeded in creating
synthetic insulin in 1978. Within
four years, Genentech had
formed a partnership with the
pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly to
market synthetic insulin under
the brand name Humulin.
It proved to be a lifesaving
development for millions of peo-
ple with diabetes, and it meant
that insulin no longer had to be
extracted from animals.
“We chose insulin because it
looked doable, and there was a
need,” Dr. Riggs said. “At the time,
diabetics were being treated with
cow insulin because there was no
source of human insulin. And
cow insulin resulted in a high
rate of allergic reactions.”
The genetic technique that Dr.
Riggs and Itakura developed, us-
ing recombinant DNA, is also
technological foundation ofmonoclonal antibodies, a thera-
py widely used in treating cancer,
autoimmune disorders, macular
degeneration, covid-19 and other
disorders.
Dr. Riggs had patents on his
developments, but he resisted all
offers to join biotech companies,
choosing instead to stay at City of
Hope. He published hundreds of
research papers but gave almost
no interviews to news organiza-
tions
“He was right there, at one of
the starting points of the modern
biotech industry — his team at
the City of Hope was the first to
make a gene that worked to treat
a disease,” Peter Dervan, a chem-
istry professor at Caltech, told
the Business Journal. “Yet even
though his work has improved
the lives of millions of diabetics
worldwide, he is relatively undis-
covered and certainly underap-
preciated.”
Arthur Dale Riggs was born
Aug. 8, 1939, in Modesto, Calif.
He was 6 when his family moved
to San Bernardino, Calif. HisBY MATT SCHUDELArthur D. Riggs, a medical
researcher whose experiments
with recombinant DNA led to the
development of synthetic insulin
for diabetes patients and helped
launch the biotechnology indus-
try, died March 23 at a hospital in
Duarte, Calif. He was 82.
His death was announced by
the City of Hope, a medical center
and research institute in Duarte
with which Dr. Riggs was affiliat-
ed for more than 50 years. The
cause was lymphoma.
Dr. Riggs, who was trained as a
biochemist, had an interest in
genetic modification and, as ear-
ly as 1968, proposed a theory that
the emerging science might be
useful in treating diabetes.
He made his most significant
work in a groundbreaking 1977
experiment in collaboration with
other scientists, most prominent-
ly Keiichi Itakura, also from City
of Hope, and Herbert Boyer, who
had left the University of Califor-
nia at San Francisco to launch the
biotechnology company Genen-
tech.
Led by Dr. Riggs, the research-
ers sought to develop a synthetic
gene called somatostatin, a mam-
malian hormone. Working back-
ward from the protein structure,
which had 14 amino acid compo-
nents, Dr. Riggs and Itakura re-
verse-engineered somatostatin’s
genetic code. They refined their
experiments to make the process
more effective.
“The artificial somatostatin
was proving not to be very stable
when injected inside a bacteri-
um,” Itakura told the Los Angeles
Business Journal last year. “Dr.
Riggs had the idea of combining
the small somatostatin gene with
a larger protein to give it more
stability. That was a critical de-
velopment. Without it, the artifi-
cial gene would not have been of
much use.”
The key discovery was not the
gene itself but the method used
to create it in a laboratory.
“It was the first human-de-
signed and man-made gene that
functioned in any organism,” Dr.
Riggs said in a 2010 interview
with the Proceedings of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences. “It
was the first mammalian hor-
mone produced in bacteria, and
it jump-started the biotechnolo-
gy industry.”
Dr. Riggs, Ikatura and Boyer
then turned their attention to
insulin, a hormone that controls
blood sugar levels and is particu-
larly crucial to people with dia-
betes. Insulin was a more com-
plex hormone, with 51 proteins
and two polypeptide chains that
had to be connected, but the
scientists simply applied the
mother was a nurse. His father, a
onetime farmer with an eighth-
grade education, operated a mo-
bile home park and had such
mechanical skills that he built
autogiros — a combination of
airplane and helicopter — from
scratch.
Dr. Riggs was 10 when his
mother gave him a chemistry set.
He received a bachelor’s degree
in chemistry from the University
of California at Riverside in 1961,
then studied biochemistry at
Caltech, receiving a doctorate in- He worked at the Salk
Institute for Biological Studies in
San Diego before joining the staff
at the City of Hope, near Los
Angeles, in 1969.
In addition to his scientific
work, Dr. Riggs was instrumental
in building City of Hope into a
prominent independent research
facility and hospital for cancer
and other diseases. He directed
its Beckman Research Institute
and was the founding dean of its
graduate school.
“My philosophy for scientific
leadership is to make sugges-
tions, almost never orders,” Dr.
Riggs said in an internal City of
Hope publication in 2019.
He was named to the National
Academy Sciences in 2006. When
he turned 81 in 2020, Dr. Riggs
stepped down as director of City
of Hope’s Diabetes & Metabolism
Research Institute, which was
renamed in his honor.
Survivors include his wife
since 1960, Jane Riggs; three
children; a sister; and three
grandchildren.
In 2008, the California Su-
preme Court ruled after 12 years
of litigation that Genentech was
required to pay City of Hope
$300 million in damages for
breach of contract on royalty
payments, mostly on patents ob-
tained by Dr. Riggs and his asso-
ciates.
With countless researchers
and biotech companies using his
scientific advances to produce
genetically engineered therapeu-
tic products, Dr. Riggs became
immensely wealthy, without
showing it.
He lived in the same house for
50 years, drove modest cars and
quietly gave most of his royalty
earnings to the City of Hope. Only
last year was the amount of his
largesse to the institution re-
vealed: more than $310 million.
After stepping away from his
administrative posts, Dr. Riggs
continued to work on scientific
projects until days before his
death.
“I could have retired into a
South Pacific mansion and en-
joyed myself on the beach,” he
said, “but I would have been
bored within a week.”
ARTHUR RIGGS, 82
M edical researcher helped develop diabetes treatment
STANART PHOTO/CITY OF HOPE
Dr. Arthur D. Riggs, left, led a team of researchers, including Keiichi Itakura, right, in 1977 to develop a synthetic gene. The key discovery
was not the gene itself but the method used to create it.CITY OF HOPE
R iggs’s team succeeded in creating synthetic insulin in 1978. He
was named to the National Academy Sciences in 2006.OF NOTEObituaries of residents from the
District, Maryland and Northern
Virginia.
William Newell,
USDA official
William Newell, 76, who re-
tired from the U.S. Agriculture
Department five years ago as the
Agricultural Marketing Service’s
dairy products branch chief, died
Jan. 24 at a hospital in Alexan-
dria, Va. The cause was complica-
tions of covid-19, said a niece,
Carol Stiller.
Mr. Newell, an Alexandria resi-
dent, was born in Jamestown,
N.Y. He joined the USDA in 1983
as an agricultural economist.Linda Wilson,
patent and trademark staffer
Linda Wilson, 70, who spent 37
years with the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office before retiring
in 2007 and was involved in the
approval process for issuance of
patents and trademarks, died
Feb. 14 at her home in Alexan-
dria, Va. The cause was athero-sclerotic coronary artery disease
and hypertension, said a son,
Jamaal Elliott.
Mrs. Wilson was born Linda
Elliott in Alexandria.Thomas Thiringer,
NASA building administrator
Thomas Thiringer, 90, a build-
ing administrator at NASA for 25
years before retiring in 1989, died
Jan. 29 at his home in McLean,
Va. The cause was a heart ail-
ment, said a son, Peter Thiringer.
Mr. Thiringer was born in Bu-dapest and came to the United
States in the early 1950 s. He was a
member of the federal govern-
ment’s Senior Executive Service.Ruth Linnenbom,
secretary
Ruth Linnenbom, 103, a secre-
tary to the director of the Naval
Research Laboratory in Washing-
ton from 1960 to 1980, died Jan.
20 at a care facility in Hoover,
Ala. The cause was a heart ail-
ment, said a grandson, Drew
Cundiff.Mrs. Linnenbom was born
Ruth Creeger in Thurmont, Md.
She was a White House corre-
spondence volunteer in the early
1980 s. She moved to Alabama
from Annapolis, Md., in 2004.William ‘Jay’ Carpenter,
firefighter
William “Jay” Carpenter, 79,
who in 1967 was a member of the
first class of Black firefighters
hired as recruits for the Prince
George’s County Fire Depart-
ment, died Feb. 9 at a nursinghome in Prince Frederick, Md.
The cause was covid-19 and con-
gestive heart failure, said a son,
William Carpenter.
Mr. Carpenter, a resident of
Clinton, Md., was born in Wash-
ington. With the fire department,
he was promoted to paramedic
and fire lieutenant/acting cap-
tain. He floated among fire sta-
tions in a supervisory role. After
his 1992 retirement from the
department, he sold real estate
for Long & Foster.
— From staff reportsBY MATTHEW CAPPUCCIAn evening of strong to severe
thunderstorms and inclement
weather ended with multiple tor-
nado warnings that affected Fair-
fax County, southern Montgom-
ery County and the northern part
of the District.
Preliminary radar data, dam-
age reports and public observa-
tions indicate there may have been
brief tornado touchdowns near
Centreville and Tysons Corner.
However, confirmation of the
tornadoes awaits damage surveys
from the National Weather Serv-
ice forecast office in Sterling,
which typically are conducted the
day after the storm.
The storm system responsible
for the potential twisters is the
same one that unleashed dozens
of tornadoes across the South on
Wednesday and into Thursday
morning, resulting in numerous
injuries and at least two fatalities.
Ahead of the possible torna-
does, the National Weather Serv-
ice had issued a severe thunder-
storm watch early Thursday af-
ternoon highlighting the poten-
tial for damaging straight-line
winds and mentioning the possi-
bility of a couple tornadoes. The
Weather Service had placed the
Washington region in an “en-
hanced risk” zone for severe
thunderstorms.
Unlike in classic summertime
tornado setups, which are fueled
by high heat and humidity, insta-
bility or “fuel” for storms was
limited. It was only 70 degrees at
the time of the storm at Washing-
ton Dulles International Airport.How the potentially tornadic
storm developed
A storm began looking omi-
nous in eastern Prince William
and western Fairfax counties just
before 8 p.m. It was riding a
differential heating boundary, oran interface between slightly
cooler surface temperatures to
the north and acutely milder air
to the south. Boundaries are like
railroad tracks that storms can
chug along; sometimes, storms
consume extra twist along these
boundaries.
By shortly after 8 p.m., the
storm was showing the character-
istics of a supercell, or rotating
thunderstorm. It had a circulat-
ing updraft and was located at the
southern end of a line of storms.
That usually gives a storm room
to strengthen, since there’s noth-
ing to the south to impede its
“inflow” of warm southerly
winds.
The storm rode directly over
Interstate 66. Although rotation
was evident on radar from the
Weather Service office in Sterling,
it didn’t look terribly tight.
Still, the National Weather Serv-
ice issued a precautionary se-
vere thunderstorm warning at8:18 p.m.
That’s about the time when the
first tornado may have touched
down.Possible touchdown near
Centreville
Despite unimpressive rotation
from the Weather Service’s WSR-
88D radar — a more powerful
device that offers slightly coarser
resolution — a high-resolution
and ultrasensitive terminal Dop-
pler radar at Dulles painted a
different story. It showed a tight
couplet of spin between Chantilly
and Centreville.
Karyn Miller, a Capital Weath-
er Gang follower on Facebook
who lives in the Sully Station area
of Centreville, commented that a
possible circulation “ripped some... siding off the chimney and a
couple other small places” of her
home. That damage would be
suggestive of an EF0 tornado or
straight-line winds in the 70-80
mph range. Her propane grill was
moved four feet across the deck.Possible touchdown No. 2
near Tysons Corner
A second probable touchdown
occurred about 8:39 p.m. in Ty-
sons Corner. That’s where radar
showed a tight “spectrum width”
signature, revealing turbulent
motions within pixels on the ra-
dar. A similarly tight couplet also
briefly materialized on velocity
mode.
One video on social media cap-
tured what appears to be a 30- to
50-foot-wide funnel moving
through the Tysons commercial
district, flanked by strong wester-
ly “rear flank downdraft” winds
on the south side of the circula-
tion. That’s where cool air wraps
counterclockwise around a circu-
lation.
Debris can also be seen falling
from above and becoming en-
trained in the apparent vortex,indicative of a probable EF0 or
EF1 tornado. Winds were prob-
ably below 90 mph. The damage
in the rear flank downdraft from
straight-line winds was probably
equivalent in magnitude to that
caused by the tornado.
Damage was reported at multi-
ple gas stations along Chain
Bridge Road. The Sunoco Station
off International Drive suffered
serious damage to its canopy,
which was toppled, and the Mobil
station next door lost at least
three window panes and suffered
damage to an awning. That would
suggest a path length of about a
quarter-mile.
Possible tornado debris landed
on the Silver Line Metro track
near Tysons, causing rail delays
and single-tracking, according to
a tweet from WMATA.Jason Samenow and Capital Weather
Gang severe weather expert Jeff
Halverson contributed to this report.CAPITAL WEATHER GANG
Severe thunderstorms bring damage, possible tornadoes to Fairfax County