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Heroes and pillars of rheumatology
Paul Hunter Plotz (1937–2024): renaissance rheumatologist, human rights advocate and mensch
  1. Frederick W Miller1,
  2. John J O'Shea2,
  3. Daniel L Kastner3
  1. 1Environmental Autoimmunity Group, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Durham, North Carolina, USA
  2. 2Arthritis and Rheumatism Branch, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
  3. 3Medical Genetics Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr. Frederick W Miller; millerf{at}mail.nih.gov

https://doi.org/10.1136/ard-2024-226596

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    Paul Hunter Plotz, MD, a Scientist Emeritus in the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, was not just an extraordinary physician and research scientist but also a compassionate mentor, a dedicated family man, a champion of human rights and an exceptionally devoted Brooklyn Dodgers baseball fan (figure 1). His personal qualities greatly influenced his work, as he conducted groundbreaking research on rheumatic disorders and played a crucial role in advancing our understanding of many autoantibodies, autoimmune illnesses, and inflammatory and other muscle diseases. Paul was born in Brooklyn, New York and was a fourth-generation physician. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1958 from Harvard, where he met his lifelong partner and wife Judith. Yet, he did not feel comfortable pursuing physics as a career and decided to embrace his family’s medicine tradition, obtaining a medical degree from Harvard in 1963 and completing a medicine residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1965.

    Figure 1

    Dr Paul Plotz at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, Maryland. Courtesy Rhoda Baer.

    Early research accomplishments

    Paul’s scholarly contributions over five decades have been wide-ranging, reflecting his breadth of knowledge, powerful intellect and disciplined curiosity, beginning when he was a medical student at Harvard. His first two published papers were first-authored manuscripts in Nature1 and Science2 that describe his work on the mechanisms of action of penicillin and streptomycin accomplished during a research year in Bernard Davis’s bacteriology laboratory while in medical school. After finishing his training at Harvard and Beth Israel, Paul completed a Rheumatology fellowship under Norman Talal at the NIH and then an immunology rotation in the laboratory of Avrion Mitchison, National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London. He then accepted …

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Contributors All authors contributed to information gathering, compiling, writing, editing and reviewing the manuscript. FWM is the guarantor.

    • Funding This research was supported by the Intramural Research Programs of the NIH, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, and National Human Genome Research Institute.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.