系里准备为阿肯森出书，这是我所贡献的文字，已经获得看过英文稿的熟人的好评。为了让更多的人读到，让我花些时间把自己的英语文章翻译成中文，只因为他确实是我心中的英雄。即使是翻译自己的文字，我还是尊重原文，我从来更讲究故事的有趣性和文字的流畅性，翻译的“信达雅”则对我要求太高了。
John: a legend, a mentor, and a friend
（约翰：传奇，导师和朋友）
We were asked to give stories about John, and this was a recent one from me. One day I was passing Madonna's office, she called me: "（My name), could you help me check if Dr. Atkinson is in the man's room?". I was surprised but have to follow her order to the man's room to check. I saw that a chamber was closed but someone occupied it. I can't tell who was inside because the door was closed. Once I noticed many manuscript papers on the floor, I knew I got him. "Dr. Atkinson," I asked. He responded: "Yeah!", I then said: "Madonna said you have a phone call." Actually, the phone call was from Dr. Grant, the ophthalmologist who discovered the CRV syndrome with John. For so many years, I tried to suggest that because the names of CRV or RVCL were so confused that they should consider just name the syndrome "Grant-Atkinson disease."
(我们被索取写些关于约翰的故事，这是近期发生的一个。一天我经过麦道娜的办公室，她叫到我：“（我的名), 你能否帮我看看阿肯森医生是否在男厕所里？”。我着实对她的这个请求吃了一惊，但是仍然必须遵循女性的要求，去男厕所查看。我看见厕所的一个厢间是关着的，意味着有人在使用它。当我从缝隙里看见论文的稿纸铺满地上时，我判断就是他。“阿肯森医生”，我问。他回答：“在啊”，我接着说：“麦道娜说你有个电话”。其实那个电话来自格兰医生，他是与约翰共同发现CRV综合症的眼科医生。这么多年来，我一直这样建议：鉴于现在的病名CRV或RVCL太令人困惑，他们应该考虑把这个综合症命名为“格兰-阿肯森病”。）
John is such a dedicated man who works long hours on weekdays and virtually every Saturday in the lab for so many decades. We all search for so-called biomarkers in our studies, our lab's routine signal is that once the door was opened before 7 AM it indicated that John was in town as he always comes to work that early. It was equally amazing that there were baked foods available in the office every Friday morning spanning more than thirty years, he brought them from bakery store of the neighborhood when he came to work.
（约翰是一位相当富有奉献精神的人，在平日的每天和在周末，他会长时间地在实验室里工作，几十年如一日。我们从事医学研究的人都希望寻找那些识别或判断疾病进度的所谓生物指标或标记物，那些给我们信息的东西。我们实验室的信号是这样的：只要实验室的门是在早晨七点钟之前开了，这就说明约翰在圣路易斯，因为他总是这么早来上班。同样令人感叹的是：每个周五的早晨，在办公室都会有烘焙的食物，据说这个传统超过了三十年，因为约翰在上班前会去邻家的那个固定的烘焙店买些带来。）
John has his historical place in the research area of complement and innate immunity by discovering the membrane complement regulators and RCA gene cluster, I remembered clearly in one lecture at WashU, John paused a little bit in watching the slide of the diagram of MCP, he said: "This molecule dears to my heart." In one of the international conference, one graduate student from Piet Gros' group came to me and said that they could not believe that John and his colleague mutated virtually all of the amino acids of MCP molecule. She told me that nowadays nobody is going to do science like this to generate a single JBC paper.
（因为发现补体的细胞膜调节蛋白和系列RCA基因聚集区，约翰已经奠定了他在补体和天然免疫研究领域的历史性地位。我仍然清晰地记得，在一次华大的演讲中，约翰面对他发现和命名的MCP分子的图解幻灯片，他停顿了片刻后深情地说：“这个分子让我特别暖心”。在一次国际会议的场合，荷兰科学家Piet Gros研究组的一位博士生与我交谈。她说他们不能想像约翰和他的同事们几乎将MCP蛋白中的每个氨基酸都突变了。她进一步说，现在沒有人这样做科学了，如此繁重的工作只为产生一篇JBC的文章。）（备注：那篇JBC至少可以分成3-5篇文章，但是他们不愿意这样做）。
But the most important thing for me is that he is a decent human being. I think there was a famous Chinese phrase termed "严于律己，宽以待人," it could be translated into English as "Self-discipline and lenient towards others," John is indeed such person, a warm-hearted Midwest American who was born in the Fourth of July. A farmer's boy who went all the way from Kansas to Harvard and finally becomes a legend at Washington University in St. Louis. John's father served in the World War II in Alaska against Japanese army, but his early lab was an attractive place for Japanese trainees as one former postdoc fellow occasionally slept in John's office in those busy and exciting years of discovering MCP.
（对我来说最重要的事情是约翰是一位纯粹而高尚的人。我想到中国的一句俗语“严于律己，宽以待人”，翻译成英文为 "Self-discipline and lenient towards others,"，约翰确实是这样的一位人，一位出生在七月四日独立日的阳光灿烂的美国中西部人。作为农民的儿子，他从堪萨斯去哈佛并且最终成为圣路易斯华盛顿大学的一个传奇。在第二次世界大战中，约翰的父亲参与了在阿拉斯加的对日本作战，但是约翰早期的实验室为相当吸引日本博士后的地方，在发现MCP的繁忙和激动人心的岁月，一位前日本博士后有时甚至睡在约翰的办公室里。）
John was undoubtedly the team member of University of Kansas' basketball, but there was a little secret that his wife Andrea leaked to my wife （名字省略） when she guided the group touring Beijing. Andrea said when they were dating in the high school, John's energy and activity in the basketball court were substantially increased when Andrea appeared the court.
（众所周知，约翰曾经是堪萨斯大学篮球队的成员之一，然而在这里我想透露一个小的秘密，我太太带领夫人们游历北京时，约翰的太太安卓雅告诉我太太的故事。安卓雅说，他们在高中相恋，当她出现在篮球场的时候，约翰的能量和活力都会显著地增加。）
When Richard retired from the lab, I went with him to Little Saigon for celebration. We all believed John is such a gifted man for virtually every part that he had passions on them; we certainly wish him great health and wellbeing in the years to come.
（当理查德从实验室退休时，我邀请他去小西贡餐厅庆祝。我们都相信，约翰是位相当难得的人物，他在自己热爱的几乎所有方面都做得杰出；我们当然殷切希望他在未来的岁月里拥有好的身体和精神。）
Descriptions for the photo: This photo was taken in Basel, Switzerland when we had our complement workshop; this is our big family when my daughter （名字省略）was so young and seemed in charging of the table, now she is going to be a sophomore at WashU. I remembered that dinner was paid by John's credit card with more than 700 Swiss francs while Claudia was helping John to calculate the tips.
（对这张照片的描述：拍摄于我们在瑞士巴塞尔开补体会议的时候，这是我们的大家庭。当时我女儿是多么小，她的态势似乎她在主宰着这餐桌，如今她将要成为华大的二年级的学生。我仍然记得那餐的超过七百瑞士法朗的费用，是约翰用信用卡支付的，当时克拉蒂雅帮助约翰计算出了小费的额度。）（注: 受训于约翰实验室的克拉蒂雅已经成为她所在领域的领袖人物，由于照片涉及私人不便在大众媒体中展现。）
阿肯森夫妇与他最得意的学生Andy Chan。来自香港的安迪在西北大学读完本科和硕士，他的MD/PhD学位是在圣路易斯华大获得的。安迪在UCSF做临床专科时因发现重要淋巴细胞传导蛋白ZAP-70而出名，后来重回华大做教授和HHMI研究员。安迪现为Genentech的资深副总裁（SVP), 他是阿肯森的骄傲。
这里还有一个信息值得分享，突显中美文化之不同：阿肯森在自己行政任务繁重时，他因考虑沒精力顾及他们而停止招博士生，在他的慢长而辉煌的研究生涯里仅培养了十位左右的博士，博士后或临床Fellow则不少。
阿肯森和CRV病人Kim在华大医学院水坛前。该水坛为阿肯森的病人家属捐赠，为耶鲁校友Maya Lin设计的。
