William F. Wade, PhD, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine died unexpectedly on Friday, May 24, 2019. An avid outdoorsman who loved fishing and hunting, he died in Maine while on a fishing trip. He was 63 years old.
"This is a very unexpected loss to our community,” says Dean Duane Compton, PhD. “Bill was strongly committed to the school through his dedication to both research and education, and we will miss him. Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time."
In his 26 years at Dartmouth, Wade, whose expertise was infectious disease, spent more than 17 years working on cholera vaccine development.
“Dr. Wade was a passionate faculty member, researcher, teacher, and academician with decades of service. Bill made some significant contributions to immunology, in particular to our understanding of the immunobiology of B cells and their interactions with CD4 T-helper cells—especially the stimulation of B cells following their MHC class II presentation of foreign antigens to the T cells,” says William R. Green, PhD, the Elmer R. Pfefferkorn Professor in Microbiology and Immunology. “In his later years, Bill built on his earlier studies in an applied way by increasingly becoming interested in the immune response to the cholera bacterium. Initially, in collaboration with the late Dr. Ron Taylor, Bill focused on various approaches to the development of a single-dose subunit vaccine, which were funded by the National Institutes of Health.”
Known for known for his straight talk, “he had a knack for asking the difficult questions that we all need to hear from time to time,” adds David Leib, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “We all enjoyed his strong sense of humor and given that he was due to fully retire in June, this is a sad, unexpected, and most untimely loss.”
There are no plans for a Dartmouth memorial service.
