Tomio Tada

Tomio Tada ( Japanese 多 田 富雄 , Tada Tomio ; born March 31, 1934 in Yūki , Ibaraki Prefecture , Japan ; † April 21, 2010 in Tokyo Prefecture ) was a Japanese immunologist and author of plays ( Nō theater).

Career

Tada was a great-nephew of the Japanese poet Fuji Tada ( 多 田 不二 , 1893–1968). He studied at Waseda University (bachelor's degree in 1952) and at the University of Chiba medicine, graduating in 1959 and gaining a doctorate in immunology in 1964. As a post-doctoral student, he went to Denver at what would later become the National Jewish Health Hospital. There he was in the group in 1967 that discovered the IgE antibody. After returning to Japan, he went to Chiba University. In 1974 he carried out an experiment to detect regulatory T cells (previously called suppressor T cells). The experiment was later proven to have failed by scientists at Caltech ( Mitchell Kronenberg and others). The search for suppressor T cells was an intensely pursued research area in the 1980s and their existence was long controversial. Tada defended his hypothesis of T cells in the immune system, which could suppress the immune response and which he believed played a role in allergies and autoimmune diseases. In the 1990s, their existence was confirmed by scientists in Japan ( Shimon Sakaguchi , Kyoto University). In 1977 Tada became Professor of Immunology at Tokyo University . In 1995 he became director of the Research Institute for Biological Studies at Chiba University. In 1999 he retired. After a stroke in 2001 Tomio Tada was paralyzed on one side, but continued to write plays. He died of prostate cancer.

He wrote six Nō pieces, including one on ethical issues of heart transplants ("Well of Ignorance", Mumyō no I , 無 明 の 井 ), inspired by a murder charge brought against a cardiac surgeon in 1968 in Japan, one on the victims of the radioactive contamination in Hiroshima ( Gembakuki , 原 爆 忌 ) and one about the theory of relativity and the search for truth ("The Hermit Isseki", Isseki Sennin , 一 石 仙人 ).

In 1989 he founded the journal International Immunology . In 1980 he received the Emil von Behring Prize , four years later he was named Bunka Kōrōsha, a person with special cultural merits .

He was married and had two daughters.

Web links

• Obituary in the NY Times