History
Mason I. Lowance, M.D., a 1927 Emory University School of Medicine graduate, practiced allergy and internal medicine for 50 years at a time when little was known about human immunology. Upon his retirement in 1979, grateful patients and friends provided seed money that eventually grew into the endowment that now supports the Lowance Center for Human Immunology. The Lowance family, represented by his sons David Lowance, M.D., a nephrologist and Director of the Lowance Center Advisory Board, and Mason Lowance, Ph. D., requested that the center be dedicated to elucidating and discovering basic underlying mechanisms of immune disorders, whether they be clinically expressed as allergy, transplant rejection, cancer, autoimmune disease, or the many other diseases that are now known to be related to disorders of the immune system.
The Kathleen B. and Mason I. Lowance Center for Human Immunology was inaugurated on May 24, 2004, by Thomas Lawley, M.D., Dean of Emory School of Medicine, and Wayne R. Alexander, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman of Medicine. On that day, Jörg J. Goronzy, M.D., Ph.D., was named the Mason I. Lowance, M.D., Professor of Medicine, and Cornelia M. Weyand, M.D., Ph.D., was named the David C. Lowance, M.D., Professor of Medicine.