Bernard N. Fields
Bernard Nathan Fields (March 24, 1938 in Brooklyn, New York — January 31, 1995, West Newtown, Massachusetts) was an American microbiologist and virologist. Fields was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Fields was the Adele Lehman Professor and chairman of the department of microbiology and molecular genetics of Harvard Medical School, and he was the head of division of infectious diseases at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Prior to that, he was on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal "Virology". He  was the founding senior editor of a textbook first published in 1985 as ""Virology", that then was renamed eponymously for him as "Fields Virology". Its sixth edition was published in 2013. The seventh edition, is planned to include four volumes, with volume 1 published in 2020. While memorializing Field in 1995, Harold Varmus, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health, called Fields "the intellectual leader of the field for more than the last decade". In his obituary, The New York Times said that Fields "is credited with spearheading the current resurgence of research on how viruses cause damage". The  National Academies Press called him "a recognized leader in the field of viral pathogenesis" and said Fields will "be remembered for emphasizing the importance of basic research in the area of clinical medicine and in helping to define molecular parameters that affect disease". Fields died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. Career. Fields received his A.B. degree at Brandeis University. He received his M.D. degree in 1962 from New York University School of Medicine.