Background
Frederick Gay was born on July 22, 1874, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of George Frederick and Louisa Maria (Parker) Gay.
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
Frederick received a Bachelor of Arts from from Harvard University in 1897 after a trip around the world.
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States
Frederick earned a Doctor of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University in 1901.
Belgium
the Order of the Crown
educator pathologist scientist bacteriologist
Frederick Gay was born on July 22, 1874, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of George Frederick and Louisa Maria (Parker) Gay.
Frederick received a Bachelor of Arts from from Harvard University in 1897 after a trip around the world. He also earned a Doctor of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University in 1901.
At Johns Hopkins Medical School the exceptional student attracted the attention of Simon Flexner, who made Gay his assistant and invited him to join the world tour of the Johns Hopkins Medical Commission for the study of bubonic plague and other diseases. After one year in the Philippines investigating cholera and dysentery, Gay returned home via Paris, where he studied at the Pasteur Institute, was fascinated by the young and brilliant Jules Bordet, and became acquainted with the infant sciences of microbiology and immunology. After returning to America he served from 1901 to 1903 as assistant demonstrator in pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, then headed by his mentor, Simon Flexner.
But pure pathology was not destined to retain Gay’s exclusive attention. In 1903 he rejoined Bordet, now established in his own Pasteur Institute in Brussels, and for the next three years was deeply engrossed in the emerging problems of anaphylaxis, complement-fixation, and other aspects of immunology. Returning to America in 1906, he served for one year as bacteriologist at the Danvers Insane Asylum, and from 1907 to 1909 was instructor in pathology at Harvard Medical School. In 1909 Gay completed and published the first English translation of the classic Studies in Immunology by Bordet and his associates, an accomplishment that immediately brought him into national prominence.
In 1910 he accepted the position of professor of pathology at the University of California at Berkeley, a post he was to retain for thirteen years. At Berkeley he finally persuaded the authorities to establish a separate department of bacteriology, and it was as the department’s first director that he spent his final two years in California. During World War I and later Gay served as a member of the medical section of the National Research Council, and in 1922 he was its chairman. He also served as chairman of the Council’s Medical Fellowship Board from 1922 to 1926. In the latter year he traveled from one Belgian university to another as exchange professor.
In 1923 Gay had accepted his last academic position, as professor of bacteriology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His monograph Typhoid Fever was already well-known, but at Columbia he produced his most famous work, Agents of Disease and Host Resistance, the best exposition of the problems of bacteriology and immunology of the period. His humanistic interests also asserted themselves at this time. His Last book, The Open Mind, dedicated to the memory of his lifelong friend, the psychiatrist Elmer E. Southard, reveals the depth of his concern with current problems of psychology and sociology.
Any evaluation of Gay’s wide and varied contributions to science and to society must deal with the unusual dichotomy of his interests. The influence of Bordet is evident in his studies on serum reactions and on anaphylaxis. As a bacteriologist he made substantial contributions to our knowledge of the carrier state in typhoid; hemolytic streptococcic infections; and viral diseases, especially the herpetic and encephalitic. Other specific entities with which he concerned himself included pneumonia, meningitis, influenza, and poliomyelitis. Always he explored the possibility of indlucing antibody formation by the use of antigens, stressing the practical application of such reactions to the diagnostic problems of infectious disease. Among the multitude of related subjects on which Gay wrote are cowpox, tobacco mosaic, bacteriophage, protozoa, spirochetes, rickettsia, dental caries, Vincent’s angina, bacterial mutation, chemotherapy, lysozyme, and the importance of hormones and vitamins in resistance to infection.
Gay was a member of the Association of American Physicians, the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, the American Society for Experimental Pathology, the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the Association of American Bacteriologists, and the American Association of Immunologists. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences a few months before his death.
Gay was a man of great sincerity and integrity. Possessed of a touch of compassion for the plight of humanity, he forged strong bonds of affection which made him a seminal influence in the lives of those who knew him well.
Frederick married Catherine Mills Jones on October 18, 1904. They had four children: Louisa Parker, Lucia Chapman, Frederick P., and William.