Passionate, ingenious and humble.
Scholar.
Tenacious.
Impactful.
Describing Dr. Nathan in one word is an extremely difficult uh problem.
He is a paragon of medical excellence.
Mensch.
A brilliant scholar and a compassionate human, so I guess I need those adjectives.
The impact that Carl has had at Weill Cornell Medicine
and beyond is uh, truly legendary
He simply has done it all, he’s a quintessential
physician-scientist who has made fundamental discoveries in his labs,
he’s been interim dean, dean, dean of the graduate school,
he was the founding director of the Tri-I MD-PhD program.
Carl is just one of the pillars of Weill Cornell Medicine.
In my lab one of the mottos of the lab is "Carl Nathan is always right."
So when Carl publishes a paper everybody in the lab knows that they have to read the paper.
I’m not aware of anyone who has made such spectacular achievements both as an immunologist
and as a microbiologist.
He’s also a biochemist, a chemist and um he does it with such grace, enthusiasm and
commitment.
He’s one of the premier scientists in the world.
Dr. Nathan was a clinician at the beginning of his career and then switched to research
trying to answer the bigger questions of how we treat patents and why we treat patients
the way we do.
He’s really discovered two key factors that help to explain why the immune system works.
Carl spent the first decade of his scientific career really identifying the molecular mechanisms
by which macrophages kill organisms.
He did seminal work in the regulation of the function of nitrous oxide, that helps kill
bacteria.
Carl’s uh research has laid the foundation to an understanding of innate immunity which
is extremely important in control of infectious disease.
Well Carl has been looking at new ways to treat tuberculosis, it’s mostly a problem
outside of the United States.
In 2017 1.6 million people died of TB.
Tuberculosis is evolving to become resistant to many of our best drugs.
And Carl has really pushed this area where others have not.
His research lays the groundwork for lots of discoveries and in the long run I think
has tremendous potential to lead to new therapeutics or even vaccines.
Carl really has been a leader in coming up with creative ideas about how to address many
of the serious problems we face.
He recognized that academia could come up with ideas
but was ill-equipped to really develop drugs.
We founded the tri-institutional therapeutics discovery institute in order to develop drugs
from out of the community.
Rockefeller University, Sloan-Kettering, and Weill Cornell Medicine and then brought in
pharmaceutical experts as partners to help us do this.
Carl was a particularly strong proponent of this idea, that any kind of drug could be
developed.
He’s very concerned about orphan drugs that large drug companies don’t pursue but which
he knows are needed by patients.
That visionary leadership coupled with his commitment to social justice has really been
the hallmark of his career.
Well beyond his work with Weill Cornell Carl makes an extraordinary commitment to selecting
the next generation of outstanding young scientists
through the Rita Allen Foundation Scientific
Advisory Committee.
So I’m very lucky that Carl is a member of the cancer research institute scientific
advisory council, he’s done this for more than thirty years and thanks to him we know
that we’re supporting the best research.
So I think this is a man that packs an awful lot into a 24 hour day.
His leadership is felt every day by the students, his trainees, the faculty.
He shaped my career because he always helped me grow and promoted my independence.
I wasn’t really sure if I
had what it takes to become a PI and I was really hesitant and
he said you know give it a shot, you just explore do what you love and
he knew I loved science.
He just inspired me and to work my best to do my best to learn more, to work harder.
He really brings a curiosity about life to his science and his work.
And he carries that spirit of openness to finding new paths to solve problems.
It’s hard to say what his most significant contributions are
because he’s not done yet.
He’s still going.