Edward Boyse, a University of Arizona researcher who first identified distinct subclasses of T-cells and also helped lay the foundation for umbilical cord stem cell transplantation, died July 14 of pneumonia. He was 83.
"He would get straight to the problem," Hal Broxmeyer, a long time collaborator now at Indiana University in Indianapolis, told The Scientist. "He would know the right questions to ask. It was a real pleasure knowing him. I learned not to be afraid to think outside the box." In 1975, Boyse made "a very important contribution to immunology" by pointing out functionally distinct subsets of T-cells in mice, Harald von Boehmer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston wrote in an Email to The Scientist. Boyse and Harvey Cantor, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, purified T-cells and used cell surface markers to show that different subclasses of T-cells have specific...

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