Group photo of London Medical students who went to Belsen Wellcome L0029073

Sir James Learmonth Gowans (7 May 1924 – 1 April 2020) was a British physician and immunologist. In 1945, while studying medicine at King's College Hospital, he assisted at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a voluntary medical student. Gowans was born in Sheffield, England. He graduated in medicine in 1947 from King's College Hospital, then in 1948 obtained a degree in physiology at Oxford, followed by a Ph.D. with

Howard Florey Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey (24 September 189821 February 1968) was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Sir Ernst Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in ...

at the

Sir William Dunn School of Pathology The Sir William Dunn School of Pathology is a department within the University of Oxford. Its research programme includes the cellular and molecular biology of pathogens, the immune response, cancer and cardiovascular disease. It teaches undergra ...

at Oxford on lymphocytes. He then became a professor of experimental pathology at Oxford. In 1977, he left his research career for ten years to be secretary of the Medical Research Council. He served as Secretary-General of the Human Frontier Science Program in 1989. He was a colleague and life-long friend of George Bellamy Mackaness. He made significant discoveries about the role of lymphocytes in the immune response. In particular, he showed that some lymphocytes were not short-lived, as previously assumed, but moved from the blood into the

lymphatic system The lymphatic system, or lymphoid system, is an organ system in vertebrates that is part of the immune system, and complementary to the circulatory system. It consists of a large network of lymphatic vessels, lymph nodes, lymphatic or lymphoid o ...

and back. On the initiative of Peter Medawar he also undertook experiments on rats that showed that lymphocytes play an important role in transplant rejection. In 1963, Gowans became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the

1971 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1971 were appointments in many of the Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. They were announced in supplements to the ''Lond ...

for services to medical science and a Knight Bachelor in the

1982 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1982 were appointments by most of the Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries, and honorary ones to citizens of other countries ...

. In 1980, he was awarded the

Wolf Prize in Medicine The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Arts. The P ...

. He was a foreign member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

and a SSI Honorary Member (1971), and received several honorary doctorates. In 1968 he received the Gairdner Foundation International Award and in 1990 shared the first Medawar Prize with Jacques Miller. In 1974, he was awarded the

Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize The Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize is an annual award bestowed by the since 1952 for investigations in medicine. It carries a prize money of 120,000 Euro. The prize awarding ceremony is traditionally held on March 14, the birthday of N ...

. He won the

Royal Medal The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal and The King's Medal (depending on the gender of the monarch at the time of the award), is a silver-gilt medal, of which three are awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important ...

in 1976.

Family

In 1956, he married Moira Leatham, with whom he had a son and two daughters.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gowans, James Learmonth 1924 births 2020 deaths Alumni of King's College London Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford Knights Bachelor Royal Medal winners 20th-century English medical doctors Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians Fellows of the Royal Society London medical students who assisted at Belsen Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Fellows of King's College London

Family

See also

References