Howard H. Seliger, Hopkins biology professor

Howard H. Seliger, a retired Johns Hopkins University biology professor who fulfilled a childhood fascination with fireflies by later investigating the science behind their light-making properties, died of coronary artery disease Dec. 20 at his Mount Washington home. He was 88.

Family members said that he was an expert on bioluminescence. He helped to show that fireflies and microorganisms found in bioluminescent bodies of water have enzymes that trigger a chemical reaction that make them light up.

Dr. Seliger was also principal scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Institute from 1972 to 1989.

"Two major events have directed my scientific career. When I was about 10 years old, I saw my first firefly. It was at Camp Northover, New Jersey, run by the Christodora Settlement House on the lower East Side of Manhattan," he said in an autobiographical essay. "From then on I became fascinated with light, and with how in the world this little insect that I held in my hand could produce light, when the only sources of light in my experience came from hot objects; sunlight, incandescent lights, and colored neon lights."

Born in New York City, he was the son of a waiter and a homemaker. He graduated from Townsend Harris High School and earned a degree at the City College of New York. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and earned a master's degree from Purdue University and a doctorate in physics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

From 1948 to 1958, he was a senior physicist in the Radioactivity Division of the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, where he studied radioactivity measurement.

In his autobiographical essay, he said that a scientific colleague recommended him to the Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowship.

"The award of the fellowship in 1958 marked the definitive turning point in my career," Dr. Seliger wrote. "I had heard that W.D. McElroy, chairman of the Biology Department at the Johns Hopkins University, was working on the biochemistry of the light production by fireflies. ... Here was the perfect opportunity. ... I came to see him, and within the hour he welcomed me into his department."

He spent his fellowship year in the Johns Hopkins biology department.

"He made a big decision. He was young and doing very well at the Bureau of Standards as a nuclear physicist," said William Biggley, his research assistant for 38 years. "He changed careers and made good use of his expertise in mathematics and physics in the field of biology."

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Howard H. Seliger, Hopkins biology professor