We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Charles Lee (Charlie) Dunford of the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC), Brookhaven National Laboratory, from cancer on 26th April 2016. Charlie was Head of NNDC from 1992 to 2002 and Head of the IAEA Nuclear Data Section from 1993 to 1995.

Charlie obtained his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and started his career at Atomics International in California. Subsequently he moved on to the IAEA Nuclear Data Section before finally joining the National Neutron Cross Section Center (later NNDC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1974.

All members of the International Networks of Nuclear Structure and Decay Data Evaluators and Nuclear Reactions Data Centers were greatly appreciative of the nuclear data systems created by Charlie personally or under his leadership; systems including data formats, utility and processing codes, methods and implementations of data storage and innovative methods to provide data access to the user community. Among his innovations was a Telnet-based online data service that provided world-wide access to the nuclear databases on Alpha/VMS systems (1990's). Subsequently Charlie initiated and organized an international collaboration for migration of the nuclear databases and services to relational databases and Java technologies - the system that is functioning now.

Charlie's strong leadership of the NNDC and of IAEA Nuclear Data Section and his many activities in connection with projects of the Nuclear Energy Agency or the International Nuclear Data Committee helped to firmly establish for our time the notion that nuclear data research should be an international effort and that we should share our scientific knowledge and products for the benefit of all.

Charlie will be greatly missed by all of us in the nuclear data community.