- Terry Yates
Terry Lamon Yates (died
December 11 ,2007 ) was an Americanbiologist andacademic who is credited with discovering the source of thehantavirus in theAmerican Southwest in 1993. cite news |first=Matt |last=Schudel |title=Terry Yates, 57; biologist found source of hantavirus |url=http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2007/12/24/terry_yates_57_biologist_found_source_of_hantavirus/ |work=Washington Post |publisher=Boston Globe |date=2007-12-24 |accessdate=2007-01-04] Yates' specialty as a biologist was the study ofrodents and other small mammals.Early life
Terry Yates was born in
Mayfield, Kentucky . He earned hisbachelor's degree fromMurray State University before completing hismaster's degree inbiology from Texas A&M in 1975. He later received his doctorate in biology fromTexas Tech University in 1978.Hantavirus
Residents living in the
Four Corners region, which encompasses parts ofArizona ,Colorado ,New Mexico andUtah , began to experience a mysterious illness in the spring of 1993. The then unknownvirus killed 32 people in just a few weeks, and sickened many others. The illness was originally nicknamed "Sin Nombre ", after a New Mexicancanyon where Spanish settlers massacred Native Americans during the colonial era.Terry Yates, a
professor at theUniversity of New Mexico , joined an interdisciplinaryresearch team charged with finding the source of the mysterious illness by the National Science Foundation. Yates, along with his research assistant,Robert Parmenter , isolated the source of the illness, which became known as thehantavirus , by using animalspecimens which he had collected throughout the American Southwest. Yates found that the hantavirus was carried by thedeer mouse , a species which had a higher than usual population in early 1993 due to unusually wet weather in the region. The discovery of the hantavirus' origin by Yates has helped to save lives and warn residents about the risks of the disease. The virus has killed more than 125 people between 1993 and 2007.Yates spent the later years of his life studying the connection between wet
weather pattern s and deer mice populations.The
National Science Foundation named Yates' discovery of the cause of the hantavirus as one of the top fifty projected funded by the NSF which had the greatest impact on peoples' lives.University of New Mexico
Yates was affiliated with the
University of New Mexico for 29 years before his death in 2007. He served as a professor of biology andpathology , before becoming the UNM'svice president for research and economic development, a position he held until his death.Additionally, Yates directed the National Science Foundation's Division of
Environmental Biology from 1990 to 1992 and again from 2000 to 2001. In 2006, he was appointed a to theboard of directors onlife sciences of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.Death
Terry Yates died of
cancer on December 11, 2007, at theUniversity of New Mexico Health Sciences Center inAlbuquerque, New Mexico , at the age of 57. He lived inPlacitas, New Mexico .References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
