Thomas P. Magill, M.D.
Brief Bio
Thomas Pleines Magill (1903–1999) was the thirty-seventh president of the American Association of Immunologists, serving from 1953 to 1954. He was a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn from 1948 to 1973 and chaired the department from 1948 to 1970.
Magill received his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1930 and remained there for the next five years, completing his residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and serving as an instructor at the medical school from 1933 to 1935. Magill spent one year as an assistant at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City before becoming a member of the staff of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1936. Two years later, he joined the faculty of the Cornell University Medical College as an assistant professor of bacteriology and immunology and was promoted to associate professor in 1943. Magill left Cornell to become professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Long Island College of Medicine in 1948, two years before it was incorporated into the SUNY system and renamed the SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Magill stepped down as chair of the department in 1970 but remained on the faculty as a professor until his retirement in 1973, when he was named professor emeritus.
AAI Service History
Joined: 1937
President: 1953–1954
Vice President: 1952–1953
Councillor: 1950–1952
Committees
Committee Appointed to Prepare a Resolution Protesting the Policy of Certain Governmental Agencies to Withhold or Withdraw Grants at Short Notice and Without Opportunity of Hearing from Competent Investigators Working on Open and Unclassified Research Projects Because of Past or Present Political Beliefs: 1954–1955 (chair)
Awards Committee: 1966–1972
President's Address
"
The Immunologist and the Evil Spirits," Delivered on April 13, 1954
The Journal of Immunology 74, no. 1 (1955): 1–8.
Institutional/Biographical Links