The cause of death of a Harvard professor who disappeared in mid-November remains undetermined nearly two weeks after his body was discovered in the Mississippi River in Vidalia, La.
The disappearance of Professor Don C. Wiley the night of Nov. 15 after leaving a banquet with colleagues from the Scientific Advisory Board of St. Jude's Research Hospital at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tenn. has shaken the Cambridge campus.
Wiley left the hotel shortly before midnight, driving a rental car. Around 4 a.m., police found the car partially blocking traffic on the Hernando Desoto Bridge, a 75-foot, mile-long bridge spanning the Mississippi River.
Police found the locked car with a full tank of gas, keys in the ignition. There was no sign of a struggle, according to investigators.
Police positively identified Wiley's body using dental methods and the identification found in Wiley's pocket but are awaiting autopsy results. Without a cause of death, however, they offered no opinion as to whether the death was a suicide or homicide.
"It is all contingent on what the autopsy examiner finds. We are still investigating," a police spokesperson said.
Despite scant evidence of murder, Wiley's friends and family members insist that Wiley would not have taken his own life.
"Before they found the body I was sure it wasn't suicide," Professor Jack Strominger, a Harvard research colleague of Wiley's, told The Dartmouth. "There are no clues available to suggest that Don would harm himself -- he was at the top of the world scientifically."
Indeed, Strominger said he was "flabbergasted" by the news.
"(He) was a leader in his field and really on top of his game," Dr. Patricia Donahoe, chairwoman of the St. Jude's Scientific Advisory Board, told The New York Times.
Colleagues also say that Wiley showed no signs of depression.
Because of the nature of his research in diseases such as the Ebola virus, some raised the possibility of a terrorist kidnapping, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation rejected such claims. Colleagues say that Wiley's research would not be useful to terrorists for biological warfare.
The shock waves of Wiley's death have affected the entire Harvard campus.
"There has been a lot of concern, which will continue until there is some sort of conclusion," said Andrea Shen of the Harvard News Office, noting that it was hard to get a feel of students' reactions during winter break when Wiley's body was discovered and identified.
Professor Wiley started as an assistant professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Harvard University in 1971, and by 1979 he achieved tenure.
His extensive research on the immune system and how viruses act garnered national attention in 1995, when he and Strominger won the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, and then went on to win the Japan Prize in 1999.
