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IN MEMORIAM
WILLIAM J. MANDY
William J. Mandy died at his home in
Austin on June 8, 1999, at the age of 66. At the time of his death,
Bill was professor emeritus at the University in the Department of
Microbiology.
He is survived by his wife of 40 years, Rosalie, his son, David, his
daughter and son-in-law, Pam and Dean Blaine, his daughter Lara, and
her fiancé, Charles Hoene, and grandchildren, Nicholas and Carly
Blaine. His sister and brother-in-law, Peggy and Jim Walker, also
survive
him.
Bill was born in Lackawanna, New York,
on March 12, 1933, to Gabriel and Margaret Mandy. His parents had immigrated
to the United States in their youth; his mother as a teenager from
Czechoslovakia;
his father as a young adult who, although born in the U.S., had grown
up in Hungary where his parents had returned after missing their homeland.
Gabriel returned to find a better future for himself in upstate New
York, where he and his future wife met each other in English night
classes.
As a result of this rich ethnic family history, Bill and his sister
Peggy grew up within two cultures, that of their parents' new country
and their old ones, and became bilingual in English and Hungarian.
Perhaps
because of this background, Bill became an individual who was always
keen to experience new adventures and was excited by new ideas and
technologies.
At the same time, he was well rooted in his sense of family tradition
and responsibility.
After graduating from high school in
1951, Bill attended the University of Buffalo for two years, leaving
to serve as a medic and paratrooper in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955.
He completed his BS degree in 1958 at Elmhurst College in Illinois,
where he seriously began to orient his future professional goals toward
a career in biology and biochemistry. Elmhurst was also where he met
his future wife, Rosalie.
Following their marriage, Bill and Rosalie
moved to the University of Houston. In 1960, two years after moving
to Texas, Bill obtained an MS degree. While at Houston, Bill worked
on cholesterol deposition in Penicillium molds. After completing
the MS degree, he made the decision to switch to his ultimate field
of study, immunology.
For his PhD degree, which Bill obtained
in 1963 from the University of Illinois, Urbana, he trained in the
specialized field of immunology known as immunochemistry. During that
three-year
period, he not only helped care for his family, did research, and wrote
a dissertation, he also co-authored an astonishing seven papers with
his mentor, Al Nisonoff, on a variety of topics related to the recombination
and heterogeneity of univalent rabbit antibody fragments. These papers
were uniformly of high quality and were quickly published in some of
the world's most prestigious journals: Science, Nature,
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and The
Journal of Biological Chemistry, with Bill as the senior author
of three of those contributions.
His next move was to the University
of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, where he further
honed his research skills in aspects of antibody immunochemistry and
immunology, as a United States Public Health Service Fellow, working
with Hugh Fundenberg. As during his PhD research years, his two postdoctoral
years were extremely productive and resulted in Bill coauthoring another
six important papers, again published in some of his field's best
journals.
Bill began his professorial career at
The University of Texas at Austin in 1965, when he joined the Department
of Microbiology as an assistant professor. Once at the University,
Bill
continued to make rapid research contributions to the emerging literature
dealing with the immunochemistry of rabbit antibodies. By that time,
however, it was not only with his own hands at the bench, but also
as
a mentor of research students. The outstanding productivity and the
high quality of his group's accomplishments in those early and difficult
years for any young professor are shown by his rapid advancement
from
assistant to associate to full professor in eight years. During that
time and after, Bill mentored numerous postdoctoral associates and
master’s
students, in addition to the ten or more students who earned PhD degrees
under his supervision.
During his academic career at The University
of Texas, Bill routinely taught courses in graduate immunochemistry
and undergraduate immunology, which were highly praised. In fact,
it
is common to find that students who had taken his undergraduate course
remember him as an excellent and fair but rigorous teacher. Bill's
keen
insights and clarity of thinking inspired and set a high standard for
his graduate students. He sincerely cared about his students as individuals
and was always available to discuss and offer advice on issues regarding
science, career or personal matters. Of his graduate students, most
have gone on themselves to distinguished teaching or research careers,
with several currently holding the rank of full professor, and one
even
having gained the distinction of being elected to the National Academy
of Sciences. Among his undergraduates, many are known to have profited
not only in the classroom, but also in the laboratory where Bill
was
at his best, because he never let professorial life completely drive
him from his first love, hands-on research. It was not unusual to
find
Bill at the bench, patiently demonstrating a technique or expressing
intense interest in the outcome of an experiment and, more often
than
not, taking part in that experiment himself.
Bill's research dealt mostly
with the genetics and regulation of rabbit immunoglobulin production
and processing.
His laboratory made numerous contributions to the field of immunochemistry,
with particular emphasis being placed on the regulation of genetic
polymorphism
in immunoglobulins. In recent years, the focus was on the definition
of biochemical properties and inheritance patterns of rabbit immunoglobulin
allotypes and major histocompatibility complex class II antigens.
Other
studies included immunochemical analysis of immunoglobulin hinge region
epitopes and identification of thymus-specific cell surface molecules.
The high quality of this research, and the high esteem with which
it
was held among his peers, are easily documented by review of the many
scientific honors he received over the years. These included a prestigious
U.S. Public Health Service Career Development Award that ran from
1966
to 1976; his continuous receipt of competitive research grants from
the National Institutes of Health throughout most of his career,
in
addition to grants from other agencies, such as the National Science
Foundation and the Welch Foundation; his appointments to numerous
editorial
boards and grant study sections; and his numerous invitations to organize
symposia or to present his science throughout the world at a variety
of national and international meetings.
Between 1972 and 1983, Bill
served on the editorial boards of Molecular Immunology, the Journal
of Immunology, the African Journal of Immunology, and Contemporary
Topics in Immunology. He edited, in 1973, with R. A. Reisfeld,
Volume 2 of Contemporary Topics in Molecular Immunology,
and with F. Inman, Volumes 4 and 8 in 1975 and 1981, respectively.
From 1971 to
1974, he was a member of the Standardization and Nomenclature Committee
on Immunoglobulin Allotypes—International Union of Immunological
Societies. Bill was a member of the American Society of Immunologists,
the Canadian Society for Immunology, the American Society for Microbiology,
and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was
also a visiting guest professor at the University of Brussels, Belgium
in 1976, chairman of the UT Austin Department of Microbiology in 1980-81,
and a visiting scientist in the Department of Microbiology at The University
of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas in 1985.
Bill retired from
the University with emeritus status in 1995. However, he did not retire
from actively contributing
to the world of immunology. Rather, he pursued and fulfilled yet another
goal by successfully establishing the immunology-based companies known
today as Bio-Medical Services of Austin, Bio-Medical International
of
Austin, and Pan American Veterinary Labs, the latter with friend and
colleague, Bob Glass. These successful businesses provide allergen
detection
systems and solutions to veterinarians treating cats, dogs, horses,
and cattle in the U.S., Latin America, Sweden, France, and South Africa.
Bill
loved to spend time with friends and family, and to travel, fish, and
hunt. He was a connoisseur of Hungarian
food, wine, and family traditions. He was a great storyteller, particularly
of tales calling on his Hungarian background or his various fishing,
hunting or other expeditions with friends or family. These loves gave
him endless material for talking about things other than science. For
example, one of his favorite stories involved a chat many years ago
with three of his colleagues, one of whom also had a Hungarian background.
The four of them were heading back to their labs after lunch one day,
talking about their backgrounds. One asked Bill whether he could speak
Hungarian, which of course Bill could do. Then he asked the other Hungarian-surnamed
colleague the same question, whose reply was that he knew very few
words.
"Like what?" the first asked, to which the fellow responded, "Well,
words like gudahgeki." "Well, what does gudahgeki mean?"
he asked. Without missing a beat, and never having exchanged this story
before with his colleague, Bill reached into his pocket, pulled out
a set of keys, and said, "Really, don't you know what a gudahgeki
is? It's what opens a gudahge (garage) door!"
Other funny stories routinely exchanged
included those pertaining to the many failures encountered while fishing
during the annual fishing trip of the "tongue-in-cheek" Society for
Applied Piscatology, better known to members as the SAPS. In one story
Bill loved to tell, his boat had caught about 20 or 30 whites in just
one quick pass off Rocky Point at Lake Buchanan. They were so proud
of this catch that they couldn't wait to get back to the camp and show
it to their fellow fishermen. Away they sped, only to discover upon
reaching shore that they had lost most of the catch when these experienced
fishermen forgot to tie the fishing baskets securely to the boat before
putting them in the lake for safe keeping.
One of Bill's most admirable
traits was his ability to be able to say just the right things in
times of
crisis or tragedy, both publicly and privately. He could be gracious
to and about those who might have wronged him, passionate and truly
comforting when family or friends faced personal crises, and tolerant
of listening to a person's concern which, in retrospect, might have
been insignificant, but seemed important at the time. He had a vibrant
personality that could fill any room he was in, yet in quiet personal
talks, his attention was fully upon the speaker and the issues at
hand.
His family, his friends, and his professional colleagues will miss
Bill Mandy.
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner,
President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors Paul J. Szaniszlo (chair), Charles F. Earhart, and Henry
R. Bose.
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