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Terry Yates wasn't the type to let a severe form of brain cancer get him down.

With his upbeat, Texas drawl, the well-known and well-liked University of New Mexico administrator looked the disease in the eye and told it straight up that he had better things to do.

On Tuesday, the 57-year-old vice president for research and economic development lost his battle with cancer, succumbing to complications of his treatment.

But in some ways he still won — he never let the disease get in his way, said Van Romero, a close friend and Yates' counterpart at New Mexico Tech.

"He took great pleasure in telling people he wasn't dead yet," Romero said. "I would often think, just by his attitude, he was going to beat it, but unfortunately that wasn't the case."

Yates, who came to UNM as an assistant professor of biology in 1978, was internationally recognized as a key figure in determining the sources of hantavirus, a respiratory disease that frequently is fatal.

When people in the Southwest began dying from an unknown viral disease in 1993, Yates worked with researchers from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track down the cause, according to a UNM news release. Using specimens Yates had collected over the years and placed in the Museum of Southwestern Biology, they were able to pinpoint a species of deer mice as the carrier of the Sin Nombre Virus.

The National Science Foundation named research done by Yates and his collaborator Robert Parmeter as one of 50 projects it has funded that have had the biggest impact on the lives of Americans.

Yates also played a major role in several research and economic development initiatives, including the creation of a nationwide, high-speed Internet network called National LambdaRail, Romero said.

"That's critical to things going on in the state like the supercomputer initiative, Magdalena Ridge observatory and the Very Large Array," Romero said. "Terry really was a national leader in LambdaRail. He initiated New Mexico's involvement."

A team-builder, Yates also created partnerships and research projects with New Mexico's three major research universities: UNM, Tech and New Mexico State, Romero said.

"Terry was quick to realize that we're much stronger as partners as opposed to individual institutions," he said.

Yates helped increase UNM's international reputation as a research institution, and his role will be hard to fill, said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat.

Yates also helped recruit David Schmidly, a longtime friend and former professor, to become president of UNM.

"To Terry's way of thinking, nothing was impossible, so he fought for life until the end — with courage and spirit that inspired all of us who were fortunate to know him," Schmidly wrote in a campuswide e-mail.

When Yates learned of his low chance of survival earlier this year, he said he didn't want to dwell on it and remained optimistic about the future.

"I don't want to talk about that in the press," he said in July shortly before surgery on his tumor. "If I die you can write my obituary, but I'm going to make it."

In the months following his diagnosis, Yates spent a lot of time fishing and hunting, Romero said.

"We had a board meeting in November, and Terry was on the phone with us," Romero said. "After a few hours Terry said he had to get off. We thought he was tired and needed to rest, so we wished him well. He said `No, I'm not resting, I have to get on an airplane. I'm going fishing.' "

That was Yates in a nutshell, Romero said.

Nothing stopped him.

"Terry approached his illness as he approached his life," Romero said. "It was just bold and charging ahead forward."

Yates is survived by his wife, Nancy, sons Brian and Michael, and daughter-in-law Laura.

A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at Popejoy Hall. Friends and family can also comment about Yates on UNM's Web site at unm.edu.