Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Rupert Everett Billingham

2003; Elsevier BV; Volume: 361; Issue: 9353 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0140-6736(03)12261-1

1474-547X

L Brent,

Organ and Tissue Transplantation Research

Leading biologist and immunologist who pioneered tissue and organ transplantation, emeritus professor of cell biology and anatomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas, USA, president of the (International) Transplantation Society and the International Society for the Immunology of Reproduction. Born Oct 15, 1921, in Warminster, Wiltshire; died of Parkinson's disease aged 81 years on Nov 16, 2002. Rupert Everett Billingham (generally known as Bill) was a distinguished pioneer of transplantation immunology who contributed notably to the development of the field of organ transplantation. He will be remembered for a number of major advances. With T Boswell he was the first to show that rabbit corneal allografts are not exempt from the strict rules of graft rejection when transplanted to a vascularised area on the chest and, with A Smith, that the cornea can be successfully preserved in the frozen state. With P L Krohn and P B Medawar he demonstrated that steroid hormones can significantly prolong the life of rabbit skin allografts. He was co-discoverer, with P B Medawar and L Brent, of acquired immunological tolerance, the discoverer (with Brent) of graft-versus-host disease, the ingenious investigator of immunologically “privileged” sites, and the leader of the team that did much to elucidate the reasons for the survival of nature's “natural allograft”—the mammalian fetus—in the womb. Bill was also a devoted university teacher who took much trouble over preparing his lectures— a fact that twice earned him the Award for Excellence in Teaching by the University of Texas. Bill interrupted his DPhil studies at Oriel College, University of Oxford, during World War II to join the Navy, and he saw active service on anti-submarine escort vessels. He returned to complete his DPhil under the supervision of Medawar, with whom he went to Birmingham in 1947 when Medawar was appointed to the Chair of Zoology there. In 1951 he moved with Medawar to University College London as a Senior Research Fellow and it was there that he contributed notably to the work on immunological tolerance, the discovery of which led to Medawar's Nobel Prize (with F M Bumet) in Medicine in 1960. The discovery of graft-versus-host disease, which can occur when immunologically active allografts are transplanted to animals or human beings that are unable to reject them, was also made there. Having married Jean Morpeth in 1951, Bill moved to the USA with her and their first two children in 1957 when he was offered a senior research post at the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia. This transplant proved highly successful and he went on to become Professor and Chairman of the Department of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School (1965–71) and Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at the University of Texas at Dallas (1971–86). He was widely honoured for his numerous research contributions, including the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1961, the Presidency of two major international societies, and The Medawar Medal (jointly with Brent and M Simonsen) in 1994 for the discovery of graft-versus-host disease. Engagingly, he retained his Wiltshire burr against all the odds in his American environment. Bill and Jean had a third child in the USA and his family survive him there. They gave him unstinting support in his long-drawn out illness, especially of course Jean, who cared for him lovingly and devotedly in their home until the end.