Eulogy to Professor John L. Fahey: My Teacher, Collaborator, and Professional Counselor

Abstract

My family and I were indeed very sad to learn of the early departure of Professor John L. Fahey, an exemplary academic scientist and administrator who contributed significantly to the biological sciences, unraveling many underlying mechanisms of several diseases, including cancer and HIV. His contributions have substantially improved human health worldwide. I was fortunate to meet John for the first time at a 1970 immunology conference in Washington D.C. He had been recruited from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to become the chair of the then department of microbiology and immunology at the School of Medicine. I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences, Rehovot, Israel, beginning in 1969 after receiving my Ph.D. degree at UCLA under the preceptorship of the late professor Eli Sercarz. John was recruiting new faculty at UCLA, and he requested an interview with me in Washington. During the interview, I was impressed by his vision, charisma, and knowledge and the new strategic program that he had developed for UCLA. Shortly after my interview, I received a formal letter offering me the position of assistant professor under his chairmanship. I accepted the offer and returned to Los Angeles, beginning my career in the fall of 1971. Being a new faculty member, John took me under his wing and helped me to develop my research laboratory, prepare NIH research grants, and provide me with the initial financial support for my research, including research technicians and postdoctoral fellows. Along with other newly appointed faculty, fellows, and graduate students, he organized a weekly group meeting for a multidisciplinary program in immunobiology under the sponsorship of an NIH Program Project that he initiated and ran successfully for many years. With his help, I introduced a new niche of research in cell-mediated immunity and cytotoxicity in the fields of both allotransplantation and cancer. My laboratory continued to grow and be funded by the NIH, and our findings were published in highly refereed journals, initially in collaboration with John. Several of those joint publications are listed below.* With John’s support and help, I was promoted to a tenured position as associate professor and subsequently a full professor.