In Memoriam - Prof. Larry James Brant

Abstract

Many of us met Professor Larry Brant at postgraduate courses on the island of Hvar in Dalmatia, organized by the Anthropological Institute in Zagreb under the leader[1]ship of Academician Pavao Rudan. Larry Brant was an honorary member of the Croatian Anthropological Society and Fellow of the Human Biology Association. He liked to come to Croatia and attend anthropological meetings. He was a cosmopolitan, had friends all over the world, and traveled a lot. His illness and untimely death surprised and saddened us all. Larry Brant was born as the youngest child to mother Melda and father Roy Brant in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania (PA), where he grew up with four more siblings, three brothers and one sister. They grew up in a community where Pennsylvania German and English inhabitants lived together. John Wesley Brant, Larry’s three years old[1]er brother was Larry’s closest brother and friend most of their lives. They both went to Frostburg State University in the 1960s; the University was about thirty miles from their home. Larry received a Bs in Mathematics in 1968 and John obtained a Bs in political sciences in 1965. Their both older brothers also graduated, but at other Universi[1]ties. Larry’s mother Melda had five children and was the backbone of the family. She insisted that her children work hard at school and that they attend the university. The Brant brothers accomplished the mission laid out for them by their mother and received the university education. Larry Brant received his PhD in biostatistics from the John Hopkins University after attending Penn State Uni[1]versity and Frostburg State University for earlier degrees. Professor Brant began his career in Alaska at the Centers for Disease Control, studying growth and health related factors among the Eskimos. He later became Head of the Statistics and Experimental Design Section at the Health Biomedical Research Center at the National Institute of Aging in Baltimore. His research interests included longi[1]tudinal studies, multiple comparisons, random effects models, and the prediction of preclinical disease using bi[1]ological and behavioral variables. Professor Brant had served as Chief Statistician at the Aging Institute for 30 years, before he retired. He taught as well at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and at the Loyola University. He was well known for his early contri[1]butions to the analysis of longitudinal data using mixed effects regression model and his work resulted in well over a hundred peer-reviewed publications, plenary lectures, invited lectures, symposia, and book chapters. Professor Larry Brant is also known in Slovenia because he kindly collaborated with an independent chapter in the book “An[1]thropology and Public Health”, published by the Slovenian National Institute of Public Health. Larry had three children from two marriages. With the Japanese Shako Aogaichi he had two very successful daughters Jennifer and Julija. Jennifer graduated from Stanford University and works in Chicago, and Julija is a graduate of Brown University of North Carolina. She works as medical doctor at Denver Hospital and has a fam[1]ily. With the Brazilian nurse, Ms Zulma, his second wife he had a son, Laurence, who is still a minor. Professor Larry Brant was buried in his parents’ grave in his hometown of Meyersdale, PA. We will remember him as an extremely good person, a great friend and a great expert. Maruška Vidovič