My colleague and friend Tony Davies, who has died aged 90, was an eminent British scientist who conducted research that led to the development of modern immunology.
Tony’s work was critical in elucidating the function of the thymus gland and the discovery of T-cells – a type of white blood cell that is central to our immune response. It could be argued that many modern therapies, from cancer immunotherapy to Covid vaccines, would not have been possible without the work of Tony and other immunologists of the 1960s and 70s.
Tony was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, to Muriel (nee Lacey), a homemaker, and Charles, a gas engineer. After attending Chesterfield grammar school, Tony studied botany at the University of Manchester. He then completed his national service with the Royal Air Force before returning to Manchester to complete his doctorate in 1957, publishing cytogenetic investigations into the sweet pea. His research on them was so remarkable and fundamental that it was still being cited in the 21st century.
He moved to the Institute of Cancer Research, London, in 1958, where he conducted his most important research in the field of immunology – and where he remained until his retirement in 1991 as the professor of immunobiology and deputy director. In the same year, Tony was made an emeritus professor at the University of London.
After his retirement, Tony’s intellectual drive and originality showed no signs of deterioration. He remained an active scientist, conducting experiments, writing papers and advising national and international scientific organisations, including the Medical Research Council and the World Health Organization. In the last two decades of his life, Tony developed a keen interest in the gut microbiota and its relationship to the immune response in animals – and made hugely insightful observations.
In a career spanning seven decades, Tony published nearly 200 scientific papers, including 24 in the journal Nature. Tony is perhaps unique in the modern history of science to have published scientific papers in every decade since the 1950s, his first in 1957 and his last in 2020.
He is survived by his wife, Agneta Lando, from Sweden, whom Tony met in London and married in 1984, and their son, Michael, and daughter, Hannah; by three daughters, Ann, Elise and Gillian, from his first marriage, to Patricia Dutton; and by 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Patricia and their daughter Susie predeceased him.
