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George S. Kobayashi, PhD
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George S. Kobayashi, PhD Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology The field of mycology and the mycologists who populate it lost one of its most talented and illustrious members when George S. Kobayashi died after a short illness on April 19, 2005. Dr. Kobayashi was a unique individual who was an eminent and accomplished scientist and a fun loving character who always entertained and enlightened everyone around him. He was born in the Bay Area of California where his father owned a small business. His life changed abruptly after the attack on Pearl Harbor when he and his family were interned with thousands of other Japanese Americans in relocation camps for the duration of the Second World War. Despite the hardships in the camp, Dr. Kobayashi excelled academically and also developed and maintained a sense of humor, which became one of his trademarks in later life. After the war and a stint in the army, Dr. Kobayashi received his degree in Food Science from the University of California, Berkeley. After an interval George received his PhD in Microbiology from Tulane University. He was recruited to Washington University in 1963 and remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1999 as a Professor of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology and Associate Director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory of Barnes-Jewish Hospital. During his career at Washington University, Dr. Kobayashi was truly a “triple threat”. He was an outstanding teacher and mentor, an excellent investigator and an expert clinical mycologist who always had the final word in identifying pathogenic fungi isolated from clinical specimens. Under his leadership, Washington University became a center for training medical mycologists and for research in pathogenic fungi. Dr. Kobayashi and his collaborators studied cellular differentiation in the pathogenic fungus Histoplasma capsulatum. He had more than 175 publications and was a popular visiting professor and lecturer. He served in various capacities in the American Society for Microbiology. He was a founding member and past president of the Mycological Society of America. He also served as a member of research study sections for the National Institutes of Health and was on advisory committees for the Food and Drug Administration and the American Type Culture Collection. Dr. Kobayashi had an outstanding career as a medical mycologist and received many honors for his accomplishments. Among his most important contributions were his efforts to help make medical mycology an important focus for government funding and to demonstrate that basic questions in molecular biology could be studied using pathogenic fungi. Many medical mycologists who are presently receiving NIH support for their work on pathogenic fungi are benefited by Dr. Kobayashi’s efforts.
Division of Infectious Diseases
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