Dr. William E. Paul was an immunologist best known for his pathbreaking work on cytokine biology including the discovery of interleukin-4, and an extensive body of research on this cytokine that established it as the critical regulator of allergic inflammatory diseases and for first establishing the mechanisms through which naïve CD4 T cells differentiated into Th effector cells.
He was the Chief of the Laboratory of Immunology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health and a National Institutes of Health Distinguished Investigator. From 1994 to 1997, Dr. Paul was Director of the NIH Office of the AIDS Research. During his tenure as OAR Director, he was mainly responsible for a new emphasis on HIV vaccine research and development, and proposed and obtained resources for the creation of the Vaccine Research Center on the NIH campus.
Dr. Paul was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He received the 1980 Founder’s Prize of the Texas Instruments Foundation, the 1988 3M Life Sciences Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the Tovi Comet-Wallerstein Prize of Bar-Ilan University, Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Association of Immunologists and the International Cytokine Society, the 2008 Max Delbruck Medal and the 2009 Clemens von Pirquet Medal. He was a Raymond & Beverly Sackler Senior Professor by Special Appointment at Tel Aviv University and an Adjunct Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Immunology, and the editor of the advanced textbook, Fundamental Immunology.
Bill passed away on the 18th September his pathbreaking 2015 leaving a void in immunology. To honor and celebrate his contributions to that established of immunology, the Board of Directors and members of the International Scientific Advisory Board of FPID established William E Paul Memorial Lecture and Award for Excellence in Immunology and Cell Biology.
Recipients of the William E Paul Memorial Award for Excellence in Immunology and Cell Biology
- 2023 – Frederick Alt
- 2022 – Zhijian “James” Chen
- 2021- Jeffrey V Ravetch
- 2019 – Mark M Davis
- 2018 – Christopher Goodnow
- 2017 – Ronald Germain
- 2016 – Bruce Beutler