In Memoriam

Elisha Atkins, M.D., professor emeritus of medicine, died on April 22 at the age of 84 in Belmont, Mass. With Yale colleague Phyllis Bodel, M.D., Atkins demonstrated the close relationship between the induction of fever and the ability to resist infection, and was author of numerous research articles on fever and infection. At the School of Medicine, Atkins served on the admissions committee and for a year was acting associate dean. He also served as master of Saybrook College, one of Yale’s undergraduate residential colleges.

John E. Bowers, M.D. ’47, died on February 10 at the age of 80. Bowers was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and was the chief of staff at Plantation General Hospital in Plantation, Fla.

Sonja M. Buckley, M.D., a Yale virologist who in 1969 helped to identify the deadly Lassa virus, which originated in Africa, died on February 2 in Baltimore at the age of 86. Buckley received her medical degree from the University of Zurich in 1944. After coming to the United States, she worked first as a research assistant at John Hopkins, then at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, where she became head of the solid tumor program in 1949. She began working on viruses at the Rockefeller Foundation in 1957 and came to Yale in 1964. She retired in 1994.

Marshall Edelson, M.D., Ph.D., died at the age of 76 on January 16 in Woodbridge, Conn. Edelson was a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, where he taught for over 30 years. He wrote nine books on topics ranging from group therapy to psychoanalytic theory and received many awards for his teaching and scholarship.

Nicholas M. Greene, M.D., founder of the Department of Anesthesiology at Yale, died in New Haven on December 28 at the age of 82. Greene, one of the founding fathers of modern anesthesiology, served as director and chair of the department for 18 years. He is credited with transforming the service at Yale from a technical subspecialty of surgery into a medical and academic discipline in its own right. He published several books and more than 200 articles about education and the physiological changes associated with anesthesia. In 2001 the School of Medicine honored Greene with the establishment of the Nicholas M. Greene Professorship in Anesthesiology, an endowed chair.

William E. Laupus, M.D. ’45, died on February 14. Laupus taught at New York Hospital before going into private practice in Detroit. He returned to teaching at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, as assistant professor of pediatrics, and then became chair of the department of pediatrics at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. As founding dean, he transformed the School of Medicine at East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C., into an accredited four-year program.

James M. Malloy, M.P.H. ’67, died on January 27. After his graduation Malloy worked for Yale University and then Waterbury Hospital. He also served as the CEO of three medical centers before moving to Jackson, Miss., where he founded one of the state’s first HMOs. He subsequently started a health care consulting practice. Malloy raised money for health care initiatives serving underinsured communities in Mississippi, earning him the Distinguished Alumni Service Award from the School of Public Health in 2004.

Yvedt L. Matory, M.D. ’81, died on April 15 in Needham, Mass., of complications from melanoma. She was 48. Matory was an associate surgeon in the Division of Surgical Oncology and co-chair of the Women’s Cancer Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In 2000 she started HospitalCareOnline, a company that uses computers and remote monitoring to care for patients after their discharge from the hospital.

Eric W. Mood, M.P.H. ’43, died on December 31. Mood was a veteran of World War II, who served in Italy and the South Pacific. He retired from the Army Reserve as a colonel. He worked as director of the Bureau of Environmental Sanitation for the New Haven Health Department before joining the Yale public health faculty as a lecturer. In the mid-1960s he developed the Division of Environmental Health and served as its director. His research focused on food sanitation, waste water treatment, swimming pool standards, drinking water quality, air pollution and the health aspects of housing.

Alvin Novick, M.D., professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, died in New Haven of prostate cancer on April 10 at the age of 79. After serving in World War II, during which he was a prisoner of war in Germany, Novick studied medicine at Harvard. He taught biology at Yale for 48 years and was a world-renowned expert on bat echolocation. Starting in 1982, however, he turned his attention to the aids crisis. He was chair of the Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS in New Haven and a founder of AIDS Project New Haven and Leeway, Connecticut’s only nursing home for the treatment of people living with AIDS.

George A. Silver, M.D., died on January 7 at the age of 91 in Chevy Chase, Md. A professor emeritus of public health at Yale, Silver served as deputy assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1965 until 1968. He served in the Army Medical Corps in Europe during World War II, helping to liberate Dachau and other concentration camps. After the war, he was chief of the social medicine division at Montefiore Hospital in New York. He served on the World Health Organization’s expert committee on medical care and was secretary of the Federation of American Scientists’ national council.

Send obituary notices to Claire M. Bessinger, Yale Medicine Publications, 1 Church Street, Suite 300, New Haven, CT 06510, or via e-mail to claire.bessinger@yale.edu