EDITORIAL

The members of the editorial team of Seminars in Thrombosis and Hemostasis were greatly saddened by the news of the recent passing of Professor Eberhard F. Mammen. We wish to advise our readers and colleagues that Dr. Mammen died in his sleep in his home on July 1, 2008. As previously advised,[1] Dr. Mammen had been fighting an illness for some time and finally succumbed despite our best and heart-felt wishes for a full recovery.

As also previously noted, Dr. Mammen was the founding editor of Seminars in Thrombosis and Hemostasis and acted in the capacity of editor in chief of this journal, steering its passage through the past 34 years.[1] [2] Those interested in seeing additional detail regarding some of this history are referred to previous editorials.[1] [2] In brief, Dr. Mammen was essentially responsible for selecting most of the content that has appeared in this journal over these years. In 2006, the editorial situation changed when he appointed a group of regional editors to assist him with shaping future journal content. We believe that he took this step in the hope that this new organizational paradigm would broaden the journal's appeal and its timeliness, as the field of thrombosis and hemostasis has effectively outgrown any one individual's capacity to fully keep up with all its aspects. In addition, we believe that Dr. Mammen was prescient in his realization that health issues would soon place limitations on his enormous energy and time commitments to the daily needs of the journal. Sadly, time has proved the latter to be more than correct.

Despite Dr. Mammen's passing, the journal that he founded will continue, and indeed will hopefully flourish. We hope that Dr. Mammen would be proud of the editorial team's efforts in maintaining the high quality and relevance of this journal to our readership, as ably assisted by the publication team at Thieme. If these parameters can be respectively measured by the journal's growth in impact factor and subscriptions/downloads, then in this we appear to be succeeding.

No doubt the editorial team will by necessity be reshaped at some future time; however, in the interim, we would like to honor Dr. Mammen's memory by retaining his name in our masthead for the remainder of 2008. In further honor of Dr. Mammen's memory, we are planning a special tribute issue for later this year in recognition of his work and his contribution to the field of hemostasis and thrombosis in general and to this journal in particular.

Our hearts go out to his family, friends, and colleagues. To us, it seems that a giant has fallen.

REFERENCES

• 1 Favaloro E J, Kessler C, Levi M. Editorial. Welcome to Seminars in Thrombosis and Hemostasis—2008!.  Semin Thromb Hemost. 2008;  34 1-2
• 2 Schiff D, Burgess T. Editorial.  Semin Thromb Hemost. 2004;  30 601