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Published 3/14/2012
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Dr. Victor J. Cabasso
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| 1915 - 2012 |
Dr. Victor J. Cabasso of Moraga, California, was born in 1915 in Port Said, Egypt, and passed away February 28, 2012, at the age of 96. A research scientist specializing in virology and immunology, he published some 155 articles and book chapters on bacterial and viral infections of humans and animals, including tuberculosis, leprosy, trachoma, typhus, canine distemper, measles, mumps, polio, rubella, and viral hepatitis, among others. He developed several human and animal vaccines currently in use and held ten medical patents. He was a member of numerous prestigious professional societies including the New York Academy of Sciences, the New York Academy of Medicine, the American and Northern California Societies of Microbiology, and the International Association of Biological Standardization, was an honorary member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, and served on committees of the National Academy of Science and National Science Foundation.
 Early in his career, Dr. Cabasso was a research fellow at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1939. During the turbulent years of World War II, he had to flee the Nazis to pursue his education. He earned a Doctor of Science degree in 1941 from the Sorbonne and the University of Algiers, and was a research fellow at the Pasteur Institute in Tunis from 1940-1944. From 1944 to 1946, he served with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Middle East and Greece Missions as head of the department of bacteriology and laboratories.
He came to the United States in 1946 at the invitation of a US Army officer, a fellow scientist and a physician, who recognized that Dr. Cabasso’s unique expertise in the emerging science of virology would make an invaluable contribution to public health in the United States. Dr. Cabasso became a naturalized US citizen in 1958. From 1946 to 1967, he was research virologist and then head of virus immunological research for Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, New York. He was a pioneer in the development of an oral polio vaccine in the early 1950s, and he led a team that developed numerous important human and veterinary vaccines and sera, some of which are still in use today. From 1967 to 1980, he was director of microbiology research and subsequently director and vice president of research and development at Cutter Laboratories (now Bayer AG) in Emeryville, California. At Cutter and its successor, Bayer AG, he and his team were very involved in developing treatments, now in use, for Hepatitis B in humans.
An avid reader, traveler. photographer and gardener, after retiring from Bayer AG, Dr. Cabasso became an active community volunteer, teaching French literature at area middle and high schools, and serving on the Board of Directors of the Moraga Public Library. Dr. Cabasso spoke more than six languages. He was also an artist. His dozens of colorful latch-hook tapestries, with designs drawn from sources as varied as Chinese flowers, tropical fish, and electron microscopic images of viruses, have been displayed in several local galleries and exhibitions.
Dr. Cabasso is survived by his wife of nearly 64 years, Anna, a native of New Jersey whom he met in New York City and married in 1948; his daughter Jacqueline, of Oakland, California, an internationally known peace and anti-nuclear activist; and his son Phillip, an internal medicine physician and jazz musician, who with his wife Cheryl Barnes, a widely respected jazz vocalist, lives in Sierra Madre, California.
A family celebration of his life will be scheduled. |
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA