Ernest Goodpasture

Ernest William Goodpasture, M.D.
Dr. Ernest Goodpasture (in 1955)
Born	October 17, 1886 Clarksville, Tennessee
Died	September 20, 1960(1960-09-20) (aged 73) Nashville, Tennessee
Nationality	American
Fields	Pathology and Infectious Diseases
Institutions	Harvard Medical School, Vanderbilt University, & Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
Alma mater	Vanderbilt University & Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Doctoral advisor	George H. Whipple
Known for	Goodpasture syndrome

Dr. Ernest William Goodpasture (October 17, 1886 – September 20, 1960) was an American pathologist and physician. Goodpasture advanced the scientific understanding of the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, parasitism, and a variety of rickettsial and viral infections. Together with colleagues at Vanderbilt University, he invented methods for growing viruses and rickettsiae in chicken embryos and fertilized chicken eggs. This enabled the development of vaccines against influenza, chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever, and other diseases. He also described Goodpasture syndrome.

Goodpasture was born in Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1886. He received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1908. In 1912, Goodpasture graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with an M.D. degree. There, under professors William H. Welch and George H. Whipple, he was subsequently appointed a Rockefeller Fellow in pathology; he held this position from 1912 to 1915. Thereafter, Goodpasture joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School, as an attending pathologist at the Penter Bent Brigham Hospital and assistant professor of pathology in Boston. During that time, Goodpasture took a two-year leave of absence to serve during World War I as a medical officer in the United States Navy. In 1919, he undertook a pathological study of the then-ongoing influenza pandemic. In doing so, he identified a patient whose infection was followed by a peculiar illness that featured hemoptysis and acute glomerulonephritis. That condition, now known as Goodpasture syndrome, is currently recognized as an immunologically mediated disease caused by autoantibodies that bind to pulmonary-alveolar, as well as glomerular-capillary, basement membranes. After leaving Harvard in 1921, Goodpasture worked at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine in Manila. From 1922 to 1924, he was the director of William H. Singer Memorial Laboratories, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1924, Goodpasture was invited to return to Vanderbilt as professor and chairman of the Department of Pathology, the School of Medicine having been recently reorganized. He accepted, and held that position until 1955. Goodpasture also was the Dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine from 1945 to 1950. After retirement from the latter institution in 1955, he was invited to serve as director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington, D.C. He did so through 1959, helping to reorganize and expand the institute's scientific mission.