| Departments — In Memoriam | Spring 2009 |
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Thomas H. Weller I first met Tom in 1950 during my application for a fellowship at the virus research laboratory that John Enders had established in Boston. In addition to Enders, the research team then consisted of Tom, as assistant director, and Fred Robbins, a research fellow. Although the early focus of their work was mumps and chickenpox, a key breakthrough had allowed them to grow poliovirus in non-neural human embryonic tissues. Tom, Enders, and Robbins had methodically worked out the conditions needed for in-vitro growth. The trio’s application of tissue-culture methods to the study of viral diseases laid the groundwork for development of the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines and, in 1954, earned the team the Nobel. Even while Tom worked on polioviruses, he taught parasitology at Harvard Medical School. Tom’s interest in parasitology grew naturally out of his experiences as a child in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father chaired the pathology department at the University of Michigan’s medical school. Tom spent several summers working at that university’s biology field station and, in 1937, received a master’s degree for his work on fish parasites. Tom described himself as a biologically oriented physician and was attracted to parasitology in part because it represented an opportunity to use biology directly to help mankind. In 1942, Tom interrupted his clinical training at Children’s Hospital in Boston to join the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He was stationed in Puerto Rico at the Antilles Medical Laboratory, where he conducted both field and laboratory research on malaria. When the war ended in 1945, Tom married Kay Fahey and moved back to Massachusetts to resume his clinical training at Children’s. Two years later, he joined Enders’s group in the hospital’s Research Division of Infectious Diseases. He quickly moved up the academic ladder and, following his Nobel win, was promoted to full professor and appointed head of the Department of Tropical Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, a department I joined after he recruited me from the University of Pittsburgh. Tom thought teaching was as important as—if not more important than—the department’s contributions to basic research and diagnostic services. His lectures to medical students usually began with topical issues that would whet their appetites for the study of tropical pathogens, then starkly contrast the health problems of developing countries with those of the industrialized world. The course inspired several generations of young physicians to seek further training and eventual careers in public health. Tom’s own research on viruses continued for several decades and made notable contributions. He succeeded in unraveling the conditions for growth of the varicella virus and was the first to isolate cytomegalovirus, which can cause terrible birth defects. And Tom and I together confirmed that the rubella virus could be isolated and cultured. In an interview in the late 1980s, Tom described three major satisfactions in his career. First were the warm, personal relationships he had developed with colleagues, students, and younger scientists. Then came his satisfaction at observing the far-flung influence his department’s work had in improving the health of people worldwide. Finally, he was proud of his seminal work on important human viruses like polio, varicella, and rubella. In addition to Kay, Tom is survived by sons Peter and Robert and daughter Janet. He was predeceased by daughter Nancy in 1992. Franklin A. Neva, MD, is scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Until 1969 he was the John LaPorte Given Professor of Tropical Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Photo: courtesy of the Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine |
might think that getting such an award so early in a career would contribute to self-aggrandizement. But Tom was both modest and objective whenever he reflected on this honor. Even his assessment of the “fairyland” atmosphere of the ceremony in Stockholm was tempered by the dismay he felt upon learning his acceptance speech would follow remarks the ailing, absent awardee Ernest Hemingway had penned. “What an act to follow!” Tom would later say when recalling Hemingway’s beautifully phrased speech.
Many of us can say the same with conviction about Tom Weller. He died August 23, 2008, at the age of 93.
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