In Memoriam: A Tribute to Dr. William E. Paul

Dr. Paul and his laboratory made spearheading discoveries in lymphocyte and cytokine biology, including (1) the first demonstration of IgD and IgM on B cell surfaces, (2) the discovery of interleukin 4, its production by mast cells and its role in the regulation and expression of allergic tissue inflammation, (3) the cloning of the T-cell receptor β chain, (4) the unravelling of the mechanisms of Ig class switching and (5) the role of different cytokines in the Th1/Th2 polarization of CD4+ T cells. For a few years, he also served as director of the NIH Office of AIDS Research, guiding this important field in a promising direction. All his outstanding contributions are summarized in more than 600 scientific manuscripts and in his legendary textbook Fundamental Immunology. One of the true giants of immunology, Dr. William E. Paul, the director of the Laboratory of Immunology (LI) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., USA, passed away on the morning of September 18, 2015. Already in his time at medical school, Bill wanted to become an immunologist and he pursued this goal with great dedication and motivation. He found his postdoctoral teacher and mentor in the person of the later Nobel laureate, Baruj Benacerraf, and joined him in groundbreaking work on the cellular interactions in primary and secondary immune responses that resulted in the discovery of the genetic restriction of the immune response. As successor to Dr. Benacerraf, Bill became Chief of the LI in 1970, a position that he held for the rest of his life. The list of senior investigators working there and those who came there as postdocs is truly exceptional, and reads like the Who’s Who of American and International Immunology. It includes Ira Green, Ethan Shevach, Ron Schwartz, Ron Germain, David Margulies, Mark Davis, Steve Hedrick, Maureen Howard, Laurie Glimcher, Wayne Yokoyama, Lou Matis, Junichi Ohara, Drew Pardoll, Zami Ben-Sasson, Zvi Grossman and Graham LeGros. I, the undersigned, had the privilege of working at the LI as a postdoctoral fellow and still remember the unique atmosphere, i.e. to be surrounded by highly intellectual, critical and self-critical minds solely dedicated to unravelling the cellular and molecular circuits of the immune response. Published online: November 20, 2015