It is with with deep sadness that we announce that Dr Fredric Wolf died on 23 July 2017 at the age of 71.

Fred was one of the original editors when Cochrane Airways launched over 20 years ago.  He brought considerable experience of research in education and social sciences and was not afraid to challenge the Editorial Board on these matters.  He was an early advocate of Standardised Mean Differences (SMD) in our reviews (now commonly accepted) and was also the primary author on a very large review on educational interventions for asthma in children.

On a personal note, I have happy memories of staying with Fred and his family when he hosted one our early Editors' meetings at Ann Arbor and I still treasure his gift of a signed monograph that he wrote on the statistics of SMD in meta-analysis.  The photo of Fred with the Airways team was taken at the airport in Germany following the 2008 Freiburg Colloquium.

Fred was active in other Cochrane groups as well as Airways and Beth Devine and Jeremy Grimshaw have written a moving tribute to Fred on the Cochrane Community website.

Chris Cates, Joint Co-ordinating Editor