Oswald Theodore Avery

Oswald Theodore Avery was born on October 21 1887. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia as the son of British emigrants. When he was ten his family moved to New York. His father was a Baptist minister and worked as a pastor. Oswald attended Colgate Academy and University. He graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1904. After he graduated he started working in general practice. This frustrated him because of medicine’s inability to treat many patients.

He began laboratory work at Hoagland Laboratory in Brooklyn. This was one of the first privately endowed bacteriological research laboratories in the country. Avery first caught the attention of Rufus Cole with his paper on the secondary infections in pulmonary tuberculosis. Cole was the director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The institute was founded in 1910 to allow researchers to pursue laboratory and clinical trials on the diseases that its wards treated. One of his goals was to develop a therapeutic serum for pneumonia.

Avery joined the Rockefeller Institute’s team of researchers in 1913. He worked there, focusing on the Diplococcus pneumoniae, for the next 35 years. Avery applied for the U.S. Army medical Corps when World War 1 Broke out, but was rejected. He was accepted as a private, which qualified him to become an American citizen. He eventually became a captain. He served during wartime training doctors to treat pneumonia. His lab work extended to research on influenza and secondary pneumonic infections.

Avery was well liked by his peers although he rarely socialized. He was an infrequent traveler, with one exception. He traveled to Deer Island, Maine. There he indulged in his favorite pastime, sailing. He retired in 1948 and moved to Nashville. His brother Ray lived there. Ray was also a bacteriologist at the Vanderbilt school of medicine. It was hear that he died on February 20, 1955. He was 77 years old.

Avery received many awards during his career. In 1945 he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in London. In 1947 he received Lasker Award from the American Public Health Association. And In 1949 he received the Passano Award.

Avery held many esteemed positions over the years, also. He was the President of the American Association of Immunologists. He also served as the president of the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, and the Society of American Bacteriologists. He belonged to the National Academy of Sciences. He had honorary degrees from McGrill University, NYU, the University of Chicago, and Rutgers.

He started his career working on serums to treat pneumonia. He had developed a serum to treat type one pneumococcus, when Frederick Griffith first announced his findings. He had found a “transforming factor”. In his experiment, heat killed type 2 smooth, and type 1 rough were mixed. The type one changed to type two. A few other scientists at Rockefeller, with no avail, continued the research. However in 1940 Oswald decided to take up the project. Maclyn McCarty joined the lab in 1941 and aided him in the work.

The isolation of the transforming of the isolation factor became their main focus. They found out that the factor wasn’t deactivated