‘Mother of bone marrow transplantation’ dies
husband, E. Donnall Thomas,
at a 2005 reunion of transplant
patients in Seattle
Photo by Jim Linna
Dorothy “Dottie” Thomas, the wife and research partner of 1990 Nobel laureate E. Donnall “Don” Thomas, MD, passed away on January 9 at the age of 92.
Don, pioneer of the bone marrow transplant (BMT), preceded Dottie in passing away himself on October 20, 2012, also at the age of 92.
The Thomases formed the core of a team that proved BMT could cure leukemias and other hematologic malignancies, work that spanned several decades.
Dottie may have gotten the name “the mother of bone marrow transplantation,” from the late George Santos, MD, a BMT expert at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and a colleague.
“If Dr Thomas is the father of bone marrow transplantation, then Dottie Thomas is the mother,” he once said.
“Dottie’s life had a profound impact, not just on those who knew her personally, but also countless patients,” said Gary Gilliland, MD, PhD, president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, who became friends with the Thomases when he and Don served on the advisory board of the José Carreras Leukemia Foundation.
“She and Don were amazing together in both what they accomplished and the way they cared for each other. They were so sweet together. Now, their legacy continues through the many whose lives have been saved by bone marrow transplant and those who will be saved in the future. Dottie truly helped change the future of medicine. All of us at Fred Hutch are part of her legacy.”
A romantic partnership becomes a professional one
A snowball to the face during a rare Texas snowfall in 1940 precipitated a partnership in love and work between Don and Dottie that spanned 70 years.
“I was a senior at the University of Texas when she was a freshman,” Don told The Seattle Times in a 1999 interview. “I was waiting tables at the girls dormitory, which is how I got my food.”
“It snowed in Texas, which is very unusual. And I came out of the dormitory after we’d finished serving breakfast, and there was about 6 inches of snow. This girl whacked me in the face with a snowball. She still claims she was throwing it at another fellow and hit me by mistake. One thing led to another, and we seemed to hit it off.”
The couple married in December 1942. Dottie was a journalism major in college when, in March 1943, Don was admitted to Harvard University Medical School under a US Army program. Dottie got a job as a secretary with the Navy while Don attended medical school.
“Dottie and I talked it over, and we decided that if we were going to spend time together, which it turned out we liked to do, that she probably ought to change her profession,” Don told The Seattle Times. “She’d taken a lot of science in her time in school, much more than most journalists. She liked science.”
So Dottie left her Navy job and enrolled in the medical technology training program at New England Deaconess Hospital.
“Because Dottie was a hematology technician, we used to look at smears and bone marrow together when we were students,” Don said.
She worked as a medical technician for some doctors in Boston until Don had his own laboratory. Then, she began to work with him. She worked part-time when their children were small, but, otherwise, she was in the lab full-time with her husband.
