Oswald T. Avery Collection

Oswald Theodore Avery was born on October 21, 1877, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the child of British emigrants. When his father, a Baptist minister, was invited to become the pastor of a New York City church in 1887, the family moved to the Lower East Side. Avery attended both Colgate Academy and Colgate University, where, as a talented cornetist, he became leader of the college band. He received his A.B. in 1900. Upon graduating from the Columbia University... College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1904, Avery entered general practice. In 1907, however, frustrated by medicine's inability to help some patients, he moved to laboratory work at the Hoagland Laboratory (Brooklyn), the first privately endowed bacteriological research institute in the country. Here Avery established what René J. Dubos has called the pattern of his career - the "systematic effort to understand the biological activities of pathogenic bacteria through a knowledge of their chemical composition."

Avery came to the attention of Rufus Cole, the director of the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, through his paper on secondary infections in pulmonary tuberculosis. Founded in 1910, the Hospital aimed to further medical research by enabling researchers to pursue laboratory and clinical investigations of the diseases treated in the hospital's wards. One of Cole's goals was to develop a therapeutic serum--like that which had been developed for diphtheria--for pneumonia, and to this end he asked Avery to join the Hospital's pneumonia research program. Avery moved to the Rockefeller Institute in 1913, where he focused most of his research for the next 35 years on a single species of pneumococcus, Diplococcus pneumoniae.

During World War I, Avery applied for the U.S. Army Medical Corps, but was rejected because he was still a Canadian citizen. He was accepted as a private, which qualified him for naturalization, and eventually commissioned a captain. Avery's wartime duties included instructing Army medical officers in the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia. The work of his lab also extended during this period to research on respiratory diseases of interest to the military, such as influenza and secondary pneumonic infections.

After becoming a member emeritus at the Rockefeller Institute in 1943, Avery continued his research there until 1948. He then moved to Nashville to be closer to his brother, Roy Avery, a bacteriologist at the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. He died in Nashville on 20 February 1955 at the age of 77.

Avery achieved many honors during his career. He served as president of the American Association of Immunologists, the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, and the Society of American Bacteriologists. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of a number of foreign learned societies, including the Royal Society of London. He received honorary degrees from McGill University, New York University, the University of Chicago, and Rutgers University, as well as awards from organizations such as the American Public Health Association, the Royal Society of London, the American College of Physicians, the Association of American Physicians, and the New York Academy of Medicine.

Brief Chronology

• 1887 Father moves family to New York City
• 1900 Receives A.B. from Colgate University
• 1904 Receives M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University practices medicine (general surgery) in New York City
• 1907-13 Associate Director, Hoagland Laboratory, Brooklyn (works with Benjamin White)
• 1913-48 Career at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research [RIMR]
• 1913 Becomes Assistant, Department of Hospital (October)
• 1915 Becomes Associate, Department of Hospital (July 1st)
• 1917 Works with Alphonse R. Dochez; serves in the US Army Medical Corps
• 1918 Becomes a US citizen
• 1919 Becomes an Associate Member at RIMR (July 1st)
• 1923 Becomes a "Member" at RIMR (July 1st); works with Michael Heidelberger
• 1943 Becomes Emeritus Member (July 1st); remains at RIMR until 1948
• 1944 Publishes results of research with MacLeod and McCarty on the transforming principle
• 1945 Receives the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London
• 1947 Receives the Lasker Award from the American Public Health Association
• 1948 Retires to Nashville
• 1955 Dies in Nashville (February 20th)
• 1965 Avery Memorial Gateway dedicated at Rockefeller University
• 1976 René J. Dubos's The Professor, The Institute, and DNA
• 1985 Maclyn McCarty's The Transforming Principle: Discovering that Genes Are Made of DNA

Selected Awards

• 1921 Sc.D., Colgate University
• 1929 American Association of Immunologists, President
• 1932 John Phillips Memorial Award, American College of Physicians, Paul Ehrlich Gold Medal
• 1934 American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, President
• 1935 LL.D., McGill University; National Academy of Sciences, Member
• 1942 Society of American Bacteriologists, President
• 1944 Royal Society of London, Foreign Member; Gold Medal, New York Academy of Medicine
• 1945 Copley Medal, Royal Society of London; Kober Foundation Medal, Association of American Physicians
• 1946 Charles Mickle Fellowship, University of Toronto
• 1947 Sc.D., New York University; Lasker Award, American Public Health Association
• 1949 Passano Foundation Award
• 1950 Sc.D., University of Chicago; Pasteur Gold Medal, Swedish Medical Society, Stockholm
• 1953 Sc.D., Rutgers University