Edwin H. Lennette, Ph.D., M.D.
Brief Bio
Edwin Herman Lennette (1908–2000) was the fiftieth president of the American Association of Immunologists, serving from 1966 to 1967. A founder of the field of diagnostic virology, Lennette was chief of the Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory of the California Department of Public Health from 1947 to 1978.
Lennette received his Ph.D. in hygiene and bacteriology from the University of Chicago in 1935 and his M.D. from Rush Medical College the following year. He was an instructor in bacteriology (1936–1937) and a research associate (1937–1938) at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as an instructor in pathology (1938–1939). As a staff member of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1939 to 1946, Lennette studied yellow fever and encephalitis in Brazil (1941–1944) before he was assigned to the Rockefeller Foundation laboratory in Berkeley, California (1944–1946), where he studied hepatitis and encephalitis and established the first diagnostic virology laboratory in the United States. After 18 months as chief of the Medical-Veterinary Division of the U.S. Army at Camp Detrick, Maryland, Lennette returned to his laboratory at Berkeley, which had been renamed the Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory after it had been transferred from the Rockefeller Foundation to the California Department of Health Services. He served as chief of the laboratory for 31 years before retiring as emeritus chief in 1978.
Oral History - Full Interview
Edwin H. Lennette oral history, "Pioneer of Diagnostic Virology with the California Department of Public Health (1988)," Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley
Oral History - Transcript
Click here to download the transcript of this interview
AAI Service History
Joined: 1939
President: 1966–1967
Vice President: 1965–1966
Councillor: 1961–1965
The Journal of Immunology
Associate Editor: 1960–1967
Editorial Board: 1967–1971
Committees
Nominating Committee: 1971–1972 (chair)
Other Service
AAI Representative to the FASEB Board: 1967–1969, 1970–1971
AAI Representative to the Federation Long Range Planning Committee: 1969–1971
AAI Representative to the FASEB Executive Committee: 1970–1971
President's Address
"
Some Observations on the Immunopathology of Virus-Induced Tumors," Delivered April 16, 1967
The Journal of Immunology The Journal of Immunology 99, no. 6 (1967): 1055–61.
Awards and Honors