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Sir Peter Julius Lachmann FRS FMedSci (23 December 1931 – 26 December 2020) was a British immunologist, specialising in the study of the complement system. He was emeritus Sheila Joan Smith Professor of Immunology at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge and honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and of Imperial College. He was knighted for service to medical science in 2002.

Biography

Born into a Jewish family in Berlin on 23 December 1931, he moved to London in 1938. He went to school at Christ's College, Finchley, then trained in medicine at Cambridge and University College Hospital, graduating in 1956, and obtained PhD (1962) and ScD (1974) degrees at Cambridge in immunology.

Scientific work

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Lachmann's primary research interest was the downregulation of the complement alternative pathway as a treatment for age related macular degeneration. He has previously worked on many aspects of complement biology; on microbial subversion of the innate immune response; on the immunology of measles, on systemic lupus erythematosus and on insect sting allergies.

Publications

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Honours

He held a chair at Cambridge University and served as President of the Royal College of Pathologists, Vice President and Biological Secretary of the Royal Society, and Founder President of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences. His posts in immunology have included Head and Honorary Head of the Medical Research Council Group on Mechanisms in Tumour Immunity and Honorary Director of the MRC Mechanisms in Tumour Immunity Unit.

He was also at one point Associate Editor of the journal Clinical and Experimental Immunology. From 1976 to 1999, he was Honorary Clinical Immunologist with the Cambridge Health Authority. Lachmann has also won a Gold Medal from the European Complement Network in 1997, the Medicine and Europe Senior Prize of the Académie des Sciences de la Santé in 2003.

He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (1997) and Honorary Foreign Member Czech Academy of Medicine (2012). He was an honorary member of the British Society for Immunology.

Public affairs

Lachmann helped produce the Royal Society's first report on GM crops in 1998. The report, Genetically Modified Plants for Food Use, outlined the benefits of GM plants in agriculture, medicine, food quality and safety, nutrition and health, especially in alleviating food shortage in third-world countries. This caused him to be regarded as a controversial figure by the anti-GM food lobby.

In 1999, he tried to persuade the editor of The Lancet not to publish Árpád Pusztai's research on the adverse effects of GM potatoes on rats on the grounds that it was not sound science. The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, said he received a "very aggressive" phone call calling him "immoral" and threatening that if he published the paper it would "have implications for his personal position" as editor.

Lachmann said that he made the call but denied that he threatened Horton and said the call was to "discuss his error of judgment" in publishing the Pusztai letter and to discuss the "moral difficulties about publishing bad science".

Lachmann's own account of GMOs and the Pusztai affair can be found in Panic Nation (2005).

Lachmann was a proponent of the defence of reason and scepticism in scientific academia and on topics that extend from vaccine scares to stem cell technology and to alternative medicine. He was also a bee keeper and this interest has led to an interest in the evolution of group behaviour in both bees and humans and the role of religious prescription as the building blocks of cultural evolution.

References

1. LACHMANN, Sir Peter (Julius), Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014
2. "Professor Sir Peter Lachman". The Academy of Medical Sciences. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
3. Anon (2003). "Peter Lachmann". The Lancet. 362 (9380): 338. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)13998-0. S2CID 42319464.
4. "Tribute to founder President Sir Peter Lachmann". The Academy of Medical Science. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
5. William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein, The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), p. 542
6. LACHMANN, Sir Peter (Julius), Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014
7. Simon Edwards (2005). "Professor Sir Peter Lachmann (DSc) - Distinguished Immunologist". University of Leicester. Archived from the original on 23 December 2012. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
8. "Gruppe 7: Medisinske fag" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
9. "Honorary members". British Society for Immunology. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
10. ^ Laurie Flynn and Michael Sean Gillard for The Guardian, 31 October 1999 Pro-GM scientist "threatened editor"
11. "Panic Nation". John Blake Publishing. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
12. Lachmann, Peter (2010). "Genetic and cultural evolution: from fossils to proteins; and from behaviour to ethics". Eur Rev. 18 (3): 297–309. doi:10.1017/s1062798710000050. S2CID 85572542.
13. Lachmann, Peter (2010). "Religion - An evolutionary adaptation". FASEB J. 24 (5): 1301–1307. doi:10.1096/fj.10-0502ufm. PMID 20430796. S2CID 16442413.

Sources

• "Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-87)." House of Lords–Science and Technology–Minutes of Evidence, 4 June 2009
• "The law has no place in scientific disputes." Sense About Science, 4 June 2009
• "The MMR controversy: an investigation. Part three." Melanie Phillips's Articles. 4 June 2009 .
• Open letter about ‘GM’ from UK scientists to HM Government From Professor Derek Burke and others" Chemophilia, 4 June 2009
• "Professor Sir Peter Lachmann (DSc) - Distinguished Immunologist." University of Leicester, 4 June 2009
• "Sir Peter Lachmann" "Genetically Modified Organisms" in "Panic Nation" Chapter 18 pps 153-162 Eds Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks, London John Blake, 2005
• "Sir Peter Lachmann" The Academy of Medical Sciences, 4 June 2009

External links

• Peter Lachmann on the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group website

• 1931 births
• 2020 deaths
• Jewish British scientists
• Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
• British immunologists
• Fellows of Christ's College, Cambridge
• Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom)
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
• Foreign fellows of the Indian National Science Academy
• Alumni of University College London
• Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Knights Bachelor
• People educated at Christ's College, Finchley
• Professors of the University of Cambridge
• Presidents of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom)