Int. Z lmmunopharmac., Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 1-2, 1991. Printed in Great Britain.

0192-0561/91 $3.00 + .00 Pergamon Press plc.

International Society for Immunopharmacology.

OBITUARY

PROFESSOR YUICHI YAMAMURA (1918- 1990)

Professor Yuichi Yamamura passed away on 10 June of this year. He was born and spent most of his life in Osaka and in "his" Osaka University he greatly contributed to the development of an international center of biomedicine. From "his" university he received both his M.D. (1941) and eight years later his Ph.D. That interval, for the most part, was used to fulfil his military duties as a Medical Officer in the Imperial Navy. Later he was to become Professor and Chairman of Internal Medicine (1962), then Dean of the Medical School (1967), and finally, President of Osaka University from 1979 to 1985. I believe, however, that the two periods spent outside the university played a major role in his life and career.

From 1946 to 1957 he was Chief Doctor of the National Sanatorium Toneyama Hospital. This experience nourished considerably his thoughts on most host-parasi te relationships and gave him

a unique insight into mechanisms of defense against diseases that only well-practiced medicine, particu- larly in the field of tuberculosis, can give.

The other important experience outside Osaka was his Chairmanship of the Department of Medical Chemistry at the Kyushu University Medical School (1957- 1962). Indeed it was his involvement with chemical purification and later with synthesis of nocardia cell wall components by mycobacteria which allowed him to make major contributions to science and to medicine. Fortunately for us, working in the same field gave us the opportunity to be introduced to him by Drs Kotani and Azuma and thus to establish with him and his associates a fruitful and most friendly relationship.

To enumerate the list of his society memberships or of his awards is unnecessary since to all those who have known him it is obvious that these distinctions cannot add to his stature. Indeed, his departure

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creates a vacuum of an exceptional dimension, commensurate with the caliber of a teacher who discovered and raised in the Garden of Knowledge so very many outstanding Japanese scientists. Even more importantly, the rapport he entertained with them was unique. Of these former students, now famous professors, he always talked affectionately and they in turn called themselves his sons. His departure has also been a tremendous loss for his "foreign" friends to whom he offered a very remarkable and very unusual model. Indeed, Yuichi Yamamura had an acute awareness of the synergistic

Obituary

value of opposites and a unique mastership in handling them. Such was the way he performed his tasks as a leader: with warmth, yet firmly, with restraint, yet outspokenly. Such is the essence of the brush-writing he executed for Immunology Today (reproduced here) and which again reconciles oppo- sites since it means "By looking into old things, you gain knowledge of the new." May these recollections contribute to his everlasting lesson.

LOUIS CHED1D Advisory Editor