On January 30, 2014 Gavril Istrate, professor, PhD from „Al. I. Cuza” university, passed away leaving a huge gap in linguistic and literary world on both banks of the Prut. He died several weeks before he would have turned one hundred years. During his long activity, the teacher and the scholar, Gavril Istrate was actively involved in the life of the institution he served with devotion and skill for more than 40 years. He was for 19 years the Dean of Philology Department, for 20 years the head of Romanian Language Chair of the same department and for a while he also worked as the director of the Institute of Linguistics, Literary History and Folklore from Iasi. His scientific work that consists of 11 books and over 700 articles and studies made him an original and competent researcher in key areas of philology, literary Romanian language, and dialectology, history of linguistics and of Romanian culture. He advised more than 30 doctoral theses. He loved Bessarabia since his childhood. His Model will live in the minds and hearts of all who knew him.