Max Dale Cooper ForMemRS
Max Cooper at theRoyal Society admissions day inLondon, July 2017
Born	Max Dale Cooper[1] (1933-08-28)August 28, 1933 (age 91)[2] Hazlehurst,Mississippi[3]
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Tulane University University of Mississippi Holmes Junior College
Known for	T cell andB cell biology
Spouse	Rosalie Cooper
Awards	Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research Japan Prize Robert Koch Award Sandoz Prize for Immunology
Scientific career
Institutions	Emory University University of Alabama at Birmingham Howard Hughes Medical Institute University of Minnesota University of California, San Francisco Hospital for Sick Children, London

Max Dale CooperForMemRS (born August 31, 1933), is an Americanimmunologist and aprofessor at the Department ofPathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Emory Vaccine Center ofEmory UniversitySchool of Medicine.^[4] He is known for characterizingT cells andB cells.^[5]

Cooper was born and raised in ruralMississippi. His father was theSuperintendent of Education of a 12-grade school inBentonia and his mother a teacher.^[2] He lived with his family on the campus.^[6] He was interested in becoming aphysician at a young age, and his father, who wanted to studymedicine but could not due to financial reasons, encouraged him to do so.^[7] Cooper went toHolmes Junior College (nowHolmes Community College)^[8] on anAmerican football scholarship from 1951 to 1952,^[7][9] then entered theUniversity of Mississippi forpre-medical studies.^[10]

In 1954, Cooper started studyingmedicine at theUniversity of Mississippi School of Medicine. Since the school at that time was a two-yearmedical school and was becoming a four-year one, Cooper was offered the option of staying or transferring elsewhere. He chose to move to theTulane UniversitySchool of Medicine,^[6] and obtained hisMD in 1957.^[9]

After graduating frommedical school, Cooper interned at a hospital inSaginaw,Michigan for a year, and then returned toTulane UniversitySchool of Medicine for aresidency.^[6] In 1960, Cooper went toHospital for Sick Children, London aspre-registration house officer and thenresearch assistant until 1961.^[6] From 1961 to 1962, he was apediatricallergy andimmunology fellow at theUniversity of California, San Francisco.^[9]

Cooper briefly returned to Tulane as an instructor, then moved to the Department of Pediatrics at theUniversity of Minnesota in 1963 to as amedical fellow and instructor, working withRobert A. Good and conducting research. He became anassistant professor in 1966.

One year later he joined theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) as aprofessor at the Division of Immunology and Allergy of the Department of Pediatrics and anassociate professor at the Department ofMicrobiology. Over the next few years, Cooper also became a professor at the Department of Microbiology, ofPathology and ofMedicine.^[9] During this period, he was also involved with the ComprehensiveCancer Center (since 1971), the MultipurposeArthritis Center (since 1979), and theCystic Fibrosis Research Center (since 1981), all at UAB,^[9] and was an investigator at theHoward Hughes Medical Institute between 1988 and 2006.^[11]

In 2008, convinced by theGeorgia Research Alliance,^[12] whereEmory University is a partner institution, Cooper moved to the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at theSchool of Medicine ofEmory University inGeorgia,US.^[9] He is also a professor at theWinship Cancer Institute^[13] and the Emory Vaccine Center,^[14] and an Eminent Scholar at theGeorgia Research Alliance.^[12]

Cooper remains aProfessor Emeritus of Medicine at UAB.^[15]

Cooper was the president of theAmerican Association of Immunologists between 1988 and 1989 and a member of their Council from 1983 to 1988.^[16]

Cooper's research focus is theadaptive immune system, particularlyT cells andB cells. FollowingJacques Miller's discovery in 1961 of theimmunological role of thethymus,^[17] the scientific community believed that there is only one lineage oflymphocytes (the T cells), that produced by the thymus. As apediatrician, Cooper was studying patients of theWiskott–Aldrich syndrome, who have few lymphocytes but high levels ofplasma cells andantibodies, which were thought to derive from T cells.^[18]

Inspired by a report that thebursa of Fabricius (or the bursa) inchickens may be responsible for producing antibodies,^[19] he conducted experiments in 1964 on chickens to determine the roles of the thymus and the bursa.^[20] He removed the thymus or the bursa from chicks and irradiated them withX-ray to kill lymphocytes that may have been produced earlier by the thymus and bursa.^[21]

The experiments showed irradiated chicks with the bursa removed did not have plasma cells, antibodies, andgerminal centers, despite their intact thymus. Conversely, irradiated chickens with the thymus removed had low lymphocyte levels, but had normal antibodies, plasma cells, and germinal centers.^[22][23] The lymphocytes produced by the bursa are known asB cells.^[24]

Again working on chickens, Cooper also made a contribution to deducing how B cells produce different types of antibodies at different stages ofembryonic development, in the sequence ofIgM,IgG, andIgA.^[25] His experiments indicated a single lineage of B cells switch from IgM to producing otherimmunoglobulinisotypes, as opposed to multiple B cell subtypes each producing one immunoglobulin isotype.^[26] This process is known asimmunoglobulin class switching.

Collaborating with John Owen from theUK, Cooper used a series of experiments to determine themammalian organ equivalent to the bursa and found that B cells are produced in theliver offetalmice.^[27] Together with independent reports by Pierre Vassalli^[28] andGustav Nossal^[29] in 1974 that B cells were produced in thebone marrow of fetal mice, these discoveries showhaematopoietictissues generate B cells inmammals.^[30]

More recently, Cooper studied theadaptive immune system injawless vertebrates, includinglampreys andhagfish. Working withJan Klein, he confirmed theseanimals have cells functionally similar to mammalian T cells and B cells.^[31][32] Cooper's group also found that instead of antibodies, lampreys have a family ofimmune receptors. They named itvariable lymphocyte receptor.^[33][34] Owing to the unique specificity of these antibody-counterparts and their distinction from human antibodies, they may be used in treating cancers such asmultiple myeloma andbrain cancer.^[35][36]

External videos
Seminar by Max Cooper aboutimmune cells injawless vertebrates after an introduction about his career.

• Member of theAmerican Society for Clinical Investigation (1972)^[37]
• President's Medal,University of Alabama at Birmingham (1988)^[38]
• Member of theNational Academy of Sciences (1988)^[39]
• Sandoz Prize for Immunology (1990)^[40]
• Member of theAlabama Academy of Honor (1990)^[2]
• Member of theNational Academy of Medicine (1990)^[41]
• Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992)^[42]
• Fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (1994)^[43]
• American Association of Immunologists Lifetime Achievement Award (2000)^[44]
• Robert Koch Award (2010)^[45]
• Foreign Associate of theFrench Academy of Sciences (2015)^[46]
• Foreign Member of theRoyal Society (2017)^[47]
• Japan Prize (2018)^[48]
• Distinguished Fellow ofAmerican Association of Immunologists (2019)^[49]
• Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2019)^[50]
• Honorary Doctor of Medical Sciences fromYale University (2023)^[51]

• American immunologists
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Emory University School of Medicine faculty
• University of Mississippi alumni
• Tulane University School of Medicine alumni
• University of Alabama at Birmingham faculty
• University of Minnesota faculty
• University of California, San Francisco faculty
• 1933 births
• Living people
• People from Hazlehurst, Mississippi
• Foreign members of the Royal Society
• Members of the French Academy of Sciences
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Members of the National Academy of Medicine
• Recipients of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

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