ABOVE: © CHARLES WARDEN, ETSU
Immunologist and virologist Thomas Hodge III died on July 31 due to complications of COVID-19. He was 69. According to The Washington Post, Hodge was medically ineligible to be vaccinated against the disease.
Born and raised in Gainesville, Georgia, Hodge graduated from Emory University in nearby Atlanta in 1974, where he double-majored in biology and chemistry, according to his CV. He received his PhD in immunology from East Tennessee State University College of Medicine in 1982.
After graduation, he worked as an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham School of Medicine for four years, before leaving to join the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hodge was the section chief of molecular immunology in the division of HIV/AIDS pathogenesis at the CDC until 1993 when he took over as the division’s director of the immunogenetics laboratory, where he stayed ...