Remembering the man behind the JOBS Act

FORTUNE -- By diluting a range of securities regulations, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act is designed to help growing companies access capital with greater ease. The law's boosters describe it as essential to job creation; its critics decry it as a recipe for stock fraud. David Thomson was in the former camp, and argued that a small number of fast-growing public companies have had an outsize impact on U.S. economic growth. Thomson was quietly crucial to the JOBS Act. Michael Ference, a senior policy aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, says that it was Thomson's research that led to the law. Tragically, Thomson will not get to see if the law works. He died Aug. 8 after a heart attack. He was 58.

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