Alick Isaacs
| Alick Isaacs | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 July 1921 |
| Died | 26 January 1967 (aged 45) |
| Fields | Virology |
| Institutions | National Institute for Medical Research |
| Alma mater | University of Glasgow |
| Notable awards | Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |
Alick Isaacs FRS[1] (17 July 1921 – 26 January 1967) was a British virologist. Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann, a Swiss virologist, are best remembered as the co-discoverers of interferon in 1957.[2] He served as the Head of the Laboratory for Research on Interferon, National Institute for Medical Research, 1964–7.[3] Joyce Taylor-Papadimitriou worked as an early career researcher in his laboratory.[4] A collection of his laboratory notes is held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.[5]
Family & Early Life
His paternal grandparents, Barnet Galinsky and Leah Schreiber, hailed from the small towns of Saki and Tels in Lithuania, where, so far as is known, their ancestors had lived for generation as peasants and small traders. Alick's grandmother, whom he knew well i his boyhood, was a shrewd and kindly woman. About the year 1880 anti-Semitic oppression, which had long been a feature of the Lithuanian scene, was intensified and many Jews, Alick's grandprents among them, fled the country. On arrival in England, unable to speak the language, Alick's grandfather gave his name to the immigration officials as Barnet the son of Isaas, and thus receives the English surnams Isaacs. At first he settled in Leeds where he worked as a tailor's presser. It was there that he married and that Alick's father Louis, the first of the five children of the marriage, was born in 1890. Soon after, his parents moved to Wigan and then to Glasgow, where the family settled in the Gorbals area. Barnet was barely able to support his family, and at the age of 12 Louis left school and started work as a butcher's message boy. Louis was everything that his father was not--intelligent, ambitious, cheerful and hard-working. Fro mhis earliest days he was determined to drag his family from the poverty in which they lived and to attain the standards of material and cultural well-being which he saw around him.[6]
Education
Isaacs was born to Jewish parents in Glasgow.[7] He earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Glasgow in 1954 and was awarded honours and the Bellahouston Gold Medal for his research on the influenza virus.[1]
Awards and honours
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1966,[1] shortly before his death.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Andrewes, C. H. (1967). "Alick Isaacs 1921-1967". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 13: 204–226. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1967.0010.
- ↑ Kolata, Gina (2015-01-22). "Jean Lindenmann, Who Made Interferon His Life’s Work, Is Dead at 90". New York Times. Retrieved 2015-02-12.
- ↑ D Burke (14 February 2009). "The Discovery of Interferon, the First Cytokine, by Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann in 1957". BrainImmune.com.
- ↑ Alick Isaacs, Hutchinson Encyclopedia
- ↑ "Alick Isaacs Laboratory Notebooks 1938-1965". National Library of Medicine.
- ↑ Andrewes, Christopher H.. “Alick Isaacs. 1921-1967”. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 13 (1967): 205–221. Web...
- ↑ Bruce, Duncan A. The mark of the Scots: their astonishing contributions to history, science, democracy, literature, and the arts, p. 214. Citadel Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8065-2060-4. Accessed 31 August 2011. "In 1957 Alick Isaacs, born in Glasgow to Jewish parents, discovered and named interferon, an entirely new defense mechanism against viruses."
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