Frank J. Dixon, M.D.
Brief Bio
Frank J. Dixon (1920–2008) was the fifty-fifth president of the American Association of Immunologists, serving from 1971 to 1972. Dixon founded the Division of Experimental Pathology at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation (now the Scripps Research Institute) in 1961. While serving in several administrative capacities, Dixon oversaw biomedical research at Scripps for the next 25 years and helped establish it as one of the world’s preeminent research institutions.
Dixon received his M.D. at the University of Minnesota in 1943 and was immediately commissioned as a lieutenant into the U.S. Marine Medical Corps. Upon his return from war-time service in the Pacific in 1946, Dixon spent two years in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School as a research assistant. He was an instructor at the Washington University School of Medicine from 1948 to 1951 before chairing the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 1951 to 1960. He moved to La Jolla, California, in 1961 to establish and chair the Division of Experimental Pathology at Scripps. In 1970, he was appointed chair of the Biomedical Research Departments at Scripps, and, four years later, he became director of the institute, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.
Lasker Award
1975 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award “for demonstrating, in a series of brilliant experimental studies with model systems in laboratory animals, that immunologic responses, which ordinarily serve to protect the individual, may actually cause injury and disease.”
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AAI Service History
Joined: 1950
President: 1971–1972
Vice President: 1970–1971
Councillor: 1966–1970
The Journal of Immunology
Associate Editor: 1957–1974
Committees
Committee Appointed to prepare a resolution protesting the policy of certain governmental agencies to withhold or withdraw grants at short notice and without oppurtunity of hearing from competent investigators working on open and unclassified research projects because of past or present political beliefs: 1954–1955
Committee to Study the Question of Improving the Program at the Annual Meeeting: 1957–1958
Committee to Study Congress on Immunology: 1967–1968
Advisory-Search Committee for Limitation of Abstracts: 1969–1970
First Internationl Congress of Immunology Organizing Committee, 1971–1972
Awards Committee: 1974–1976 (chair)
Other Service
AAI representitvive to FASEB Board, 1970–1973
President's Address
"
Pathogenesis of Immunologic Disease," Delivered April 12, 1972
The Journal of Immunology 109, no. 2 (1972): 187–92.
Awards and Honors
- Theobald Smith Award, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1952
- Joseph J. Bunim Gold Medal, American Rheumatism Association, 1968
- Gairdner Award, 1969
- Member, National Academy of Sciences, 1971
- Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, 1975
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1981
- Paul Klemperer Award, New York Academy of Medicine, 1989
Institutional/Biographical Links