Biography:

For a junior high school county science fair project, Tom Mitchell evaluated a chromogenic medium designed to recognize Candida albicans by its production of a pink colony. The medium did not perform well, but Mitchell was hooked on microbiology and mycology. As an undergraduate at the University of North Texas, he worked four years as a laboratory assistant and instructor for Professor James McBryde, PhD, who taught courses in botany and bacteriology and inspired an extraordinary number of students to careers in microbiology and medicine. After earning his BA in biology and chemistry in 1963, Mitchell worked for three years as a research technician in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Tulane University School of Medicine. As one of his projects, pursuing a new report at the time, he collected avian excreta from the cages of a variety of exotic birds at Audubon Zoo in New Orleans and isolated Cryptococcus neoformans and other yeasts. Mitchell subsequently entered the doctoral program in the same department and earned his PhD in 1971. He was mentored by Lorraine Friedman, Ph.D., with whom he investigated the phagocytosis of C. neoformans by Lewis rat peritoneal macrophages. By studying with Dr. Friedman, Mitchell became a academic descendent of the first generation of medical mycologists and established an unforeseen connection to Duke University.

Dr. Friedman earned her doctorate at Duke University under the direction of Norman F. Conant, PhD, who was James B. Duke professor and chair of Microbiology and Immunology. Dr. Conant had obtained his doctorate at Harvard University and did postdoctoral work in Paris with Raimond Sabouraud, MD, who is recognized as the founder of medical mycology. Dr. Conant became a pioneer in medical mycology and established the discipline in the United States. During his career, Dr. Conant, along with a small number of other investigators (e.g., Rhoda Benham at Columbia, Charles E. Smith at Stanford, Arturo Carrion in Puerto Rico, Chester Emmons at the NIH, Pablo Negroni in Argentina and G.C. Ainsworth in England), comprised the first generation of medical mycologists. Dr. Conant co-authored several editions of the Manual of Clinical Mycology, which was the seminal text for this new discipline. He taught the Duke Summer Mycology Course from 1948 until he retired in 1973, directed numerous dissertations and supervised many others who came from all parts of the world to learn about medical fungi. To some degree, he influenced every medical mycologist who was trained prior to 1970. The second generation of eminent medical mycologists who studied with Dr. Conant included Drs. Libero Ajello, Margarita Silva-Hutner, Howard Larsh, Morris Gordon, and of course, Lorraine Friedman. After leaving Duke, Dr. Friedman supervised or co-mentored the doctoral dissertations of a number of prominent medical mycologists, including George S. Kobayashi, Donald Greer, Judith E. Domer, Angela Restrepo, and Jim E. Cutler. Her orbit at Tulane provided an inspiring and heady atmosphere for medical mycology, and Mitchell was fortunate to have been there.