Sir James Gowans was a distinguished researcher who discovered the central role of the lymphocyte, enabling a fuller understanding of immunity, and a gifted organisational leader, who guided the UK’s Medical Research Council through a decade of reduced funding and the rise of AIDS.
James Learmonth Gowans was born in Sheffield, England, on 7 May 1924, the son of John Gowans, a medical laboratory technician, and his Swedish wife Selma Josefina (née Ljung). The family moved to London when he was four, and he attended the independent (Whitgift) Trinity School in Croydon, before gaining a medical degree from London and Lincoln College Oxford, with clinical experience at King’s College Hospital (KCH) in South London. While at medical school he was part of a group of medical students who went to the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to provide medical services.1
After only a five-month stint as a house physician at KCH in 1947, he joined Howard Florey at Oxford on a Medical Research Council Studentship, first gaining a BA Hons Physiology in 1948 at Florey’s request, and a DPhil in 1953. He was appointed as Staines Medical Research Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford, 1955-1960 and it was here in 1957 that he first published the research that would make his name - as The Lancet states ‘his notable achievement was to pinpoint the central role of the lymphocyte in the immune response. In so doing, he became one of the scientists who opened the way to a fuller understanding of immunity.2
In 1956 he married Moyra (née Leatham) and the couple had one son and two daughters. Moyra’s father Hugh William Leatham was a general practitioner, and her brother Aubrey Leatham became one of the leading British cardiologists of his time, heading the team who engineered and fitted the first artificial pacemaker in 1955.
Now recognised as a distinguished researcher at a relatively early age, he held a variety of roles simultaneously throughout the 1960s. He became a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford in 1960, Henry Dale Research Professor at the Royal Society from 1962, and Director of the Medical Research Council’s Cellular Immunology Unit from 1963. The latter was established specifically for him to carry on his work on the lymphocyte, train and encourage junior researchers, and enable collaboration with overseas researchers to translate the research into wider use across medicine.
In addition to his undoubted research capabilities, he had begun to take on organisational leadership roles outside of Oxford – as a member of the Medical Research Council (MRC) from 1965 to 1969, and member and vice-president of the Royal Society Council from 1973 to 1975. Leaving research altogether in 1977 to become Secretary of the MRC, he surprised colleagues who clearly felt that he should have continued his research career.
Knighted in 1982 following an earlier CBE in 1971, his ten years at the helm of the MRC coincided with a declining budget and many challenges including the introduction of IVF and the rise of AIDS. A detailed tribute published in the MRC News on his retirement lists the many achievements during his tenure, including the establishment of at least 12 MRC units in specific clinical fields, three Nobel prizewinners from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and his role in directing programmes of research on vaccines and antiviral agents for AIDS, as well as improving public understanding and acceptance of both AIDS and IVF.3
James did not settle for a quiet retirement from the MRC in 1987. As his obituary in Nature notes:
‘The Human Frontiers Science Program was inaugurated in 1987 in a major Japanese initiative, and, in 1989, Gowans was appointed the first secretary general with offices in Strasbourg. Gowans continued to hold many trusteeships and adviserships after retiring to his home in Oxford and to his cherished library of Darwiniana in 1995. He perpetually sought fresh contacts with young scientists and maintained conversations with long-standing colleagues and friends to the end.’4
James died on 1 April 2020, leaving Moyra and their children Jenny, Lucy and William.
RCP editor
Sources/further reading
1 James Learmonth Gowans: Medical Student. Belson Online Archive. www.belsen.co.uk/james-learmonth-gowans-medical-student/?_page=4&dir=2&name_directory_startswith=F [Accessed 31 August 2023]
2 Watts G. Obituary: James Learmonth Gowans. Lancet 2020;395:1966. www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31410-0.pdf [Accessed 31 August 2023]
3 Retirement of Sir James Gowans. MRC News 1987;37:3-4 http://libgallery.cshl.edu/items/show/75875 [Accessed 31 August 2023]
4 Howard, J.C., Weissman, I.L. James L. Gowans 1924–2020. Nat Immunol 21, 595 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-020-0696-3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-0696-3 [Accessed 31 August 2023]
5 James Learmonth Gowans. Wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Learmonth_Gowans [Accessed 31 August 2023]
6 Catalogue of the Archive of Sir James Gowans. A Bodleian Libraries blog. https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/tag/immunology/ [Accessed 31 August 2023]