Dr. Blair’s influence includes his groundbreaking work on fitness and mortality in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, his role as founding president of the U.S. National Coalition to Promote Physical Activity, and as senior scientific editor of the first U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and Health. Dr. Blair’s seemingly endless energy and singular focus helped to build the discipline of physical activity as we now know it. At times controversial, he always relied on the scientific process to advance the field and separate physical activity and public health from the laboratory-based constraints of classical exercise physiology.

Although Dr. Blair’s scientific contributions are apparent and readily available, less well-known is the influence he had on young scientists, particularly his support of young scientists and practitioners who are women. Leaders are everywhere. Those who set themselves apart are those who take the time to pull the next generation(s) up with them. Dr. Blair was particularly influenced by Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger, and he turned that mentoring into a role model for himself. Indeed, the field of physical activity and health is what it has become because of Dr. Blair’s leadership and attention to the next generation of leaders. For young scientists in the newly formed discipline of physical activity epidemiology in the 1980s, he was a hero.