Paul Lacy
| Paul Eston Lacy | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 7, 1924 Trinway, Ohio |
| Died | February 15, 2005 (age 81) |
| Residence | St. Louis, Missouri |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Anatomy; Experimental Pathology |
| Institutions | Washington University in St. Louis |
| Alma mater | Ohio State University (B.S. & M.D.); University of Minnesota (Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Research in diabetes mellitus |
Paul Eston Lacy (February 7, 1924 – February 15, 2005) was an anatomist and experimentalist and one of the world’s leading diabetes mellitus researchers. He is often credited as the originator of islet transplantation.
Lacy was born in Trinway, Ohio in February, 1924. He was educated at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, both as an undergraduate and a medical student, obtaining B.S. and M.D. degrees in 1944 and 1948, respectively. From there Lacy matriculated to the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota, for graduate work in anatomy and experimental pathology. He was awarded a Ph.D. in that discipline by the University of Minnesota in 1955.
In 1955, Lacy was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri. He undertook research into the characterization of endocrine cells in the pancreas, using ultrastructural and fluorescent-antibody-labeling methods. That work resulted in a better understanding of how beta cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans produced and exported insulin, and it steadily propelled Lacy through the academic ranks.
In 1961, Lacy was named the sixth chairman of Pathology at Washington University, having been preceded by Eugene Lindsay Opie, Leo Loeb, Howard McCordock, Robert Alan Moore, and Stanley Hartroft. The last of those individuals had concentrated his efforts almost exclusively at building a strong research program in the department, and Lacy furthered that process. Indeed, never having been trained in a clinical patient-care specialty, he took only passing interest in surgical pathology or laboratory medicine. Lauren Ackerman—one of the preeminent surgical pathologists of all time—was concurrently a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at Washington University. Ultimately, Lacy invited Ackerman to join his department; subsequently, the two had a reasonably cordial but somewhat-distant professional relationship for the next decade.
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