Charles A. Janeway, Jr. (1943-2003)

Dr. Charles Alderson Janeway, Jr., a professor of Immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, died Saturday, April 12th, at his home in New Haven, Connecticut, after a long illness. He was 60 years old.Figure 1Figure 1Figure 1Charles A. Janeway, Jr.View Large Image | View Hi-Res Image | Download PowerPoint SlideCharlie was born in Boston on February 5, 1943, to Charles A. and Elizabeth B. Janeway. He was raised in Weston, Massachusetts, where he formed several lifelong friendships. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1963 with a degree in Chemistry.His interest in medicine was inspired by his parents: his father was Physician-in-Chief at Boston Children's Hospital from 1946 to 1974 and his mother was a social worker at the Boston Lying-In Hospital.By earning his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1969, Dr. Janeway joined a long family line of prominent physicians. In addition to his father, his grandfather, Theodore C. Janeway, was the first full-time professor of medicine at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine, and his great-grandfather, Edward G. Janeway, was the New York City Health Commissioner and medical school dean.Charlie trained in basic-science immunology with Hugh McDevitt at Harvard, with John Humphrey at the National Institute for Medical Research in England from 1965 to 1967, and with Robin Coombs at Cambridge University in England, 1969. He completed an internal medicine internship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston from 1969 to 1970. Following five years of immunology research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, under William E. Paul, and two years at Uppsala University in Sweden under Hans Wigzell, he joined the Yale faculty in 1977.Charlie's contributions to immunobiology have been profound. He was one of the leading immunologists of his generation, whose ideas formed many of the concepts that today comprise the basis of the field. He made major contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms whereby T cells recognize their cognate antigen. He was an important contributor to the understanding of the interactions between the T cell receptor, MHC-antigen complexes, and superantigen. Charlie coined the term “coreceptor” for CD4 and CD8 and studied the role these molecules play in T cell activation.More recently, he became renowned for his work on innate immunity. In 1989, in his opening lecture at the annual Cold Spring Harbor symposium on quantitative biology, Charlie gave birth to the modern era of innate immunity. With remarkable insight, Charlie hypothesized that pattern recognition receptors would mediate recognition of pathogens by metazoans, a striking prediction made purely on theoretical grounds. Under the heading “The Immunologist's Dirty Little Secret,” Charlie wrote “The Landsteinerian fallacy, then, is the idea that the immune system has evolved to recognize equally all nonself substances, and that self/nonself discrimination is based solely on clonally distributed receptors encoded in rearranging gene families that can discriminate hapten A from hapten B. I contend that the immune system has evolved specifically to recognize and respond to infectious microorganisms, and that this involves recognition not only of specific antigenic determinants, but also of certain characteristics or patterns common on infectious agents but absent from the host.” (“Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology: Immunologic Recognition” Volume LIV. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1989, pp. 6–7.)Subsequent incisive experiments carried out by Ruslan Medzhitov in Charlie's laboratory established the underlying mechanism of pattern recognition by identifying the founding member of the mammalian Toll-like receptor family.During his career, Charlie published more than 300 scientific papers and won a number of awards. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he was honored with the American Association of Immunologists Lifetime Achievement Award and the Avery Landsteiner Award, the highest honor of the German Society of Immunology. He also received the William B. Coley award from the Cancer Research Institute and The Outstanding Leadership Award from the Irvington Institute for Immunologic Research. He served on the board of directors of several research institutes, including the Trudeau Institute, Jackson Laboratory, and FASEB. He was president of the American Association of Immunologists from 1997–1998.He took pride in training medical students, undergraduate and graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows, many of whom are now professors in immunology departments around the world. A gifted teacher, his brilliant lectures won him Yale's Bohmfalk Teaching Award in 1991 and served as the foundation for his acclaimed textbook, Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease, now in it's fifth edition.As a founding member of the Section of Immunobiology at Yale, Charlie was instrumental in establishing the Section's culture of openness and interaction. His encyclopedic knowledge of immunology provided the intellectual bridge connecting the many subdisciplines represented in our Section. This same breadth was invaluable during our term as Editors of Immunity.Friends, colleagues, and family remember him as one who loved sharing outdoor activities with his family, especially hiking and fly-fishing in New York's Adirondack Mountains and sailing the waters off of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. He treasured the poetry of Robert Frost and illustrated a number of Frost's poems with linoleum block prints.Charlie is survived by his wife and colleague of 25 years, H. Kim Bottomly, also a professor of Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine; three daughters: Katherine A. Janeway, M.D., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hannah H. Janeway and Megan G. Janeway, both of New Haven; three sisters: Anne Janeway of Marlboro, Vermont, Elizabeth J. Gold of Toronto, Ontario, and Barbara B. Janeway of Newfields, New Hampshire; three nephews and one niece; and one grandnephew and one grandniece.In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Janeway Memorial Fund to benefit immunology research. For more information regarding donations, please send an email to Linda.Isakson@yale.edu.