IN MEMORIAM

Thomas C. Moore, M.D.

Professor of Surgery, Emeritus

Los Angeles

1921—2004

With the passing of Thomas C. Moore on October 26, 2004, UCLA lost a distinguished surgeon and scientist. Tom served as professor of surgery and chief of pediatric surgery at Harbor-UCLA for more than three decades and achieved national and international recognition during this distinguished career.

 

Tom was a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College and received his medical education at Harvard. He was trained in surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham and Children’s Hospitals in Boston and at Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis and subsequently achieved board certification in general, thoracic, and pediatric surgery. His initial academic appointment was at Indiana University, and he rose to the rank of professor at the University of Kentucky. In 1968, he was recruited to Harbor-UCLA. During a period of sabbatical leave, Tom obtained a Ph.D. degree in molecular immunology from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) under the supervision of Professor Peter Lachman.

 

Tom was a member of every prestigious academic surgical society relating to specialization in pediatric surgery, transplantation, and immunology. He served as treasurer of the Society of University Surgeons and as a member of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the American Surgical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the American Pediatric Surgical Association, the British Society of Immunology, the Royal Society of Medicine, and many others.

 

Over the years, Tom was awarded numerous and frequent honors, both academic and nonscholastic, including a citation as Man-of-the-Year in his hometown of Muncie, Indiana in 1964. During his long career in academic surgery, he was an innovator, as well as a tireless educator and investigator. He has made seminal contributions to the understanding of a number of important neonatal surgical conditions including gastroschisis, imperforate anus, necrotizing enterocolitis, and midgut volvulus. For many years he had an active clinical practice that included abdominal, thoracic, and transplantation surgery in pediatric patients, and he continued to teach surgery at Harbor-UCLA until the time of his death.

 

Throughout his career, Tom was an investigator who actively pursued clinical and basic research in the areas of pediatric surgical diseases, transplantation biology, and modulators of cellular immunity and immunologic memory. His bibliography lists over 300 entries and is a virtual compendium of the history of major advances in pediatric surgery during the last half of the twentieth century. He pioneered a new management of necrotizing enterocolitis and midgut volvulus and also created a large body of knowledge relating to immune modulators of lymphocyte traffic and immunologic memory. In 1993 he published as a single author a definitive work, Neurovascular Immunology: Vasoactive Neurotransmitters and Modulators in Cellular Immunity and Memory, and in 1994 he published Challenges in Pediatric Surgery, again as a single author.

 

Tom was a model educator who continued to stimulate and challenge residents and students with his energetic and nurturing teaching style for his entire career. Indeed, his exuberance, zeal, and wit characterized all of his endeavors in medicine and in life. He was a genuine academic triple threat, with a lifetime of achievements as a clinician, a scientist, and a teacher. That combination of talents is rare, and one that will be missed.

 

 

Jonathan Hiatt

Bruce Stabile