Emeritus Professor Alexander R. “Sandy” Lawton III M.D. passed peacefully on August 22, 2021, at his home in Franklin, Tennessee.
Sandy was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1938.
He was a precocious child and an intelligent student. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Yale University in 1960 and earned a medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1964. He completed his residency in pediatric medicine at Vanderbilt University Hospital. Sandy went into research at the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) where he worked with John Settle Johnson, MD, and Anthony Fauci, MD. Afterward, he was recruited by Max D. Cooper, M.D. in immunology in the Division of Pediatric Immunology and Rheumatology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham before returning to Vanderbilt in 1980. In the Birmingham lab, he dove into work on immunology, particularly pediatric immunology. Dr. Cooper remembered him as a valuable addition to the high-level work his team was doing in the rapidly changing field of immunology and rheumatology. Cooper said, “I still miss the pleasure and stimulation of the vigorous, no-holds-barred, and challenging debates we used to have on each scientific and clinical problem we faced.’’
At Vanderbilt, Sandy served for 28 years as the prestigious Edward Claiborne Stahlman Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology in the Department of Pediatrics. Ever the researcher, Sandy made a significant impact with original scientific discoveries in human immunodeficiency. His research and discoveries changed the lives of children for the better. He was the author or co-author of more than 200 primary manuscripts and more than 70 invited reviews and book chapters.
The National Institutes of Health continuously funded Sandy’s research for many years. As a result of his scholarship, he was elected to membership in the American Pediatric Society, the American Association of Immunologists, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He was a diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics and the Sub-board of Pediatric Rheumatology. He served many years on the editorial boards of Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology, the Journal of Immunology, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and the Journal of Clinical Immunology.
"Sandy was a giant in the field of immunology. So much of what we take for granted today about how antibodies are produced is based directly upon some of his most insightful work. He was a dedicated teacher and mentored so many young physicians, launching them in their academic careers. He had a talent for encouraging his students to think scientifically, helping them to develop their sharpest clinical skills. Personally, he was much more than a mentor; he was a trusted colleague I could always count on and a dear lifelong friend."
"Sandy was a quietly competent man, and he never used shortcuts or took the easy way out, he was a man of integrity, humble, kind and curious — and admired by so many."
Donna Hummell, MD
Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the
Division of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology,
and Pulmonary Medicine at
Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine
Deborah Doyle, MD
After his retirement in 2008, Sandy turned his focus to his many hobbies. He was an avid animal lover, a talented photographer, and adored spending time in nature. When he wasn’t making model airplanes, computers, or woodworking, he was traveling extensively with his wife, Deborah Doyle, MD. His travel was never focused on luxurious hotels or fine dining. His choice of trips seemed to have a large component of learning and photography. He and his wife, Deborah Doyle, traveled to New Zealand, Iceland, Patagonia, Raja Ampat Archipelago in Indonesia, Antarctica, Scotland, and more. They frequently sailed the Puget Sound and San Juan Islands in Deborah’s family boat and loved to charter boats in the Virgin Islands and Greece. His awe-inspiring photographs could have filled fifteen or more science, animal, art, and scenic landscape books.
In 1960, Sandy married Frances Ritchie Crockett and remained so until her death in 2006. His sister, Bernardine (Bunny) Lawton, preceded him in death in 2020.
Sandy is survived by his wife Deborah Doyle; his daughter Julia, her daughter Caitlin, his son Alexander Lawton IV, his wife Kirsten, and their daughters, Celia and Alexandra.
SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS
1972
He traced the ontogeny of human B cell development in the human fetus. He found IgA determinants on B cells in individuals who did not have circulating serum IgA, implicating a failure of differentiation to antibody-secreting cells.
1973
He and colleagues used allogenic matched bone marrow to transplant a child who had autosomal recessive agammaglobulinemia.
He and colleagues used the fetal liver as a source of stem cells to transplant an infant who had a form of SCID caused by ADA deficiency
He and colleagues traced the development of normal lymphocytes in the infant who received those stem cells and showed that the time it took for normal T cell function was much longer than in a case in which more mature immune cells were transplanted as bone marrow.
1975
He was the first author of a paper describing the sequential activation of germline genes during a B lymphocyte’s development of Ig isotype and class switching.
1976
He reported that B cells that are induced to proliferate and differentiate in vitro by pokeweed mitogen required the presence and cooperation of T cells
1977
He reported on imbalances in T cell subpopulation in individuals who had either immunodeficiency or autoimmunity
1978
He and Larry Vogler reported what was then a “new” form of leukemia due to clonal proliferation of a pre-B cell. This is one of the most common forms of childhood leukemia.
1979
He used an anti-idiotypic antibody to define the earliest malignant precursor B cell in an individual with multiple myeloma.
1981
He was the first author of a paper that described the ability of a single human B cell bearing IgM to switch to also produce other isotypes, with implications for heavy chain Ig switching.
He showed that there are T-cell-dependent and well as T-cell-independent pathways of B cell differentiation inducible by exposure to LPS.
1984
He described (with Kathy Edwards) a child who had SCID due to the selective absence of CD4+ T cells.
1987
He (with Kathy Edwards and an ID fellow Gary Marshall) described the syndrome that is now known as PFAPA: periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis, and adenopathy syndrome, a common childhood non-infectious auto-inflammatory syndrome.
1988
He showed that a naïve human B cell could be induced to proliferate and differentiate to antibody secretion by an alloreactive T cell clone.