Matt O'Donnell

All of us in the medical ultrasound community were greatly saddened to learn of Bob Wagner's death. Bob has been a member of our community for 30 years and contributed greatly to the field. His 1983 paper with other colleagues at the FDA (Wagner RF, Smith SW, Sandrik JM, Lopez H., Statistics of speckle in ultrasound B-scans, IEEE Trans Sonics Ultrasonics 1983; 30: 156-163) is a citation classic and provided the fundamentals needed to interpret medical ultrasound images.

Besides his invaluable intellectual contributions, he was one of the most loved people in our field. Bob's dry wit and infectious sense of humor made many a boring meeting interesting and fun. I knew that I was going to have a good time whenever a crowd congregated around Bob at a reception. He kept the conversation lively and interesting, and he never promoted his own self-importance. He was a joy to talk to.

All of us in medical ultrasound will miss Bob greatly. I send my condolences to his family - Bob will definitely be remembered by my generation of ultrasound researchers.

Best,

Matt