Abstract: The sudden death of C. David Allis, a trailblazer in the fields of epigenetics and chromatin biology, immediately triggered widespread and profound mourning in the biomedical community. Through a collection of briefs, interviews, obituaries, and relevant original academic papers, the author comprehensively reviews his legendary life and highlights his contributions. The four farreaching research contributions are discovering the first histone acetyltransferase, revealing the correlation between histone H3 serine 10 phosphorylation (H3S10ph) and cell division, co-identifying the first histone site-specific methyltransferase with collaborators, and advancing the study of histone variants and “oncohistone”. A theoretical contribution is the hypothesis of “histone code”. Two general
contributions to epigenetic community are: as one of the advocators, participated in the systematic nomenclature for histone modifying enzymes; as one of the chief editors, compiled the masterpiece “Epigenetics”.