Steven Douglas, a professor of pediatrics in the Perelman School of Medicine, died on March 13. He was 85.

Dr. Douglas was born in Queens, New York.  He earned his medical degree from Cornell University in 1963 and completed his residency in medicine at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. After completing an immunology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in 1969, he held faculty positions at both Mt. Sinai and the University of Minnesota Schools of Medicine. Early in his career, in 1970, he developed laboratory techniques to investigate two crucial types of immune cells: monocytes and macrophages. Dr. Douglas dedicated his life to the study of cellular immunology.

Dr. Douglas joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, serving as a professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). He served as the chief of the section of immunology and as the medical director for the Immunogenetics Laboratory. Additionally, he held leadership roles in various professional societies. He served as a core director in the NIMH-funded Penn Mental Health AIDS Research Center and was the principal investigator for the Laboratory Biomarkers Quantitative Pharmacology Neuroimaging and Neurobehavioral Characterization Core. Dr. Douglas is widely celebrated for his significant contributions to the Penn Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) spanning 25 years. This includes his co-leadership of the CFAR Immunology Core, his popularity as a colleague and collaborator within CFAR, and his mentorship of numerous investigators who have come to make impactful contributions to the pediatric AIDS field at CHOP.

Dr. Douglas was the first researcher to isolate and culture human monocytes from peripheral blood. This groundbreaking achievement facilitated the discovery and advancement of technology to study monocyte receptors for immunoglobulin and complement, as well as disorders of monocytes in long-term culture. Dr. Douglas shared his knowledge with the scientific community in over 500 published articles and book chapters, which have been cited over 13,000 times. He was honored for his work, receiving the Abbott Immunology, Neter, Conason, and Redway Awards.

Outside of Penn, Dr. Douglas served as president of the Society for Leukocyte Biology and chaired committees of the VA, FDA (Blood Products Advisory Committee), and NIH-CSR (AIDS Immunology Pathogenesis Study Section). He also founded the Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Douglas is survived by his wife of 44 years, Mary Ann Forciea; his sister and brother-in-law, Florence and Richard Bank; his two daughters and their husbands, Hope Douglas Wisman and Michael Wisman, Anne Douglas and Evan Eisler; his grandsons, Simon and Nathan Eisler; and his two nephews, Jonathan and Brian Bank.

Funeral services were held on March 17. Donations may be made to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Please specify “Dr. Steven Douglas Education Fund” on the memo line.