Wednesday morning I received the shocking news that Helga had passed away. I wish I took the opportunity to thank her for her guidance and warmth while she was here.

I first got to know Helga in September 2013. My mentor Rameen Beroukhim prefaced our first teleconference by saying “Helga is the nicest person you’ll meet.”  Helga was a full-time surgeon who also ran a very active lab. For over 20 years she had excised and banked almost every endometrial cancer from a particular region of Norway. Before I met her, she had been one of the main contributors to the TCGA Endometrial effort that was published in Nature and set the standard for the field. For this project, she had collected paired primary and metastatic endometrial tumors, thereby assembling a dataset that would allow us to tease apart how cancer cells metastasize.

Over the next few years, my PI and I Skyped with Helga and her postdoc Erling Hoivik almost continuously as we worked on this project. She would often join us at 9PM in Bergen or sometimes between surgeries, but she always made the time.

Whenever I spoke to Helga, I was always energized by her positivity. Despite the frequent cries for love from her dog, she was always so joyous and engaged. While on my OB/Gyn rotation in medical school, I encountered several attendings who knew Helga well and raved about her. It was clear that Helga was internationally known and loved.

Although Helga was an impressive clinician and a brilliant cancer researcher, what was most impressive about her was her personal warmth. When she came to Boston, I couldn’t believe how kind to me she was and how she was always smiling. I wondered if all Norwegians we like this and vowed to make a trip to Norway to find out. When I asked about her family, she lit up. She beamed as she told me about her sons, one of whom is a young surgeon like his mom and the other is a world-class musician. Only Helga could do so many things so well and be so much to so many people.

The world will miss Helga dearly as I do now.