William Trager
The Rockefeller University
March 20, 1910 - January 22, 2005
|
Scientific Discipline: Microbial Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1973)
|
William Trager was a malaria expert who studied the relationship between parasites and their hosts. His research led to treatments for a variety of tropical diseases, and he developed new methods and tools for growing and studying parasites that vastly expanded the capabilities of everyone in his field.
Trager earned his undergraduate science degree from Rutgers University and his PhD from Harvard in 1933. He then accepted a two-year fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, where he refined a method for growing parasites outside of their host species. This breakthrough enabled him to better study the nutrients that parasites need to grow and develop, as well as the chemicals they use to affect their hosts.
During World War II, Trager served as a captain in the U.S. Army Sanitary Corps and oversaw clinical trials of an antimalarial medication while he was stationed in New Guinea. He returned to the Rockefeller Institute after the war and remained there for the rest of his career, continuing to study malaria and as other parasites that cause human disease during a career that lasted nearly seven decades.
Trager received many honors and awards during his lifetime, including the Manson Medal of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Leuckart Medal, and the S.T. Darling Medal of the World Health Organization. He served as president for several research societies, and he was editor of the Journal of Protozoology from 1953 to 1965.
