Alum, ‘Legendary’ Yale Prof Dies at 60

Charles Alderson Janeway ’63, a leading immunobiologist known for his “legendary” lectures at Yale’s medical school, died of cancer earlier this month. He was 60.

A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, Janeway was a professor of immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, as well as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

He joined Yale’s faculty in 1977.

At the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in 1989, Janeway made a groundbreaking prediction that certain receptors controlled the body’s response to invading pathogens.

Janeway went on to conduct laboratory work to prove this prediction, making him an important contributer to the field of innate immunity, the body’s first natural defense against infection.

In the late-1990s, Janeway found a link between plants, animals and invertebrates.

In conjunction with his colleague, Ruslan Medzhitov, Janeway discovered a receptor involved in organizing the layered responses to infection in the human immune system that closely resembled receptors in other organisms.

These findings suggested that the innate immune systems of many different organisms share much in common.

While Janeway accomplished a great deal in the laboratory, his passion for science also transferred into the classroom.

“He was a great teacher,” said Edmund J. Yunis, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School.

“He really enjoyed teaching, and because of that he probably wrote the most important book for immunology,” Yunis added, referring to Janeway’s leading textbook, Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease.

Janeway recieved the Bohmfalk Prize from the Yale School of Medicine in 1990 for his teaching skills.

“His lectures to the medical school are legendary,” said Richard Flavell, chair of the immunology department at Yale.

Born in 1943 in Boston, Janeway went on to continue his family’s heritage in the medical world.

His grandfather Theodore C. Janeway was the first full-time professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Janeway worked at medical institutions including Cambridge University and the National Instituates of Health before coming to Yale in 1977.

He helped found Yale’s Section of Immunobiology in 1988.

In 2001, Janeway won the American Association of Immunologists Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Charlie Janeway was a towering intellect and leading citizen of this medical school and [Yale] University,” Flavell said. “We shall miss him.”

Janeway passed away in New Haven, Conn. on April 12. He is survived by his wife, H. Kim Bottomly, also a professor of immunobiology at Yale, three daughters and three sisters.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in this article.