J. F. A. Mc Manus - Academic Career

Academic Career

After leaving England in late 1946, Dr. McManus took up a position as Assistant Professor of Pathology first at the University of Alabama and then two years later in Virginia. In 1953 he returned to the U of A and he became Professor of Pathology for the next 8 years. It was there in collaboration with Robert Mowry, Charles Lupton and Sidney Kent, that the department became one of the best known medical centers for research and education. In 1960 he teamed with Dr. Robert Mowry to write Staining Methods; a handbook integrating newer histological and histochemical methods of tissue examination into standard laboratory procedures.

After a one year sabbatical in Oxford in 1960 working back at the same lab where he had made his earlier discovery, McManus accepted a teaching position at Indiana University. He was a pioneer in the combined M.D. / PhD. program there until 1965. Through this period, his work was pivotal to the development of a number of MD-PhD graduates, many of whom hold important academic positions today. While at Indiana he wrote The Fundamental Ideas of Medicine: a Brief History of Medicine. Written from a philosophical point of view, this text is still much sought after. This experience in medical' education also brought to fruition the publication of a textbook, General Pathology, in 1966. He became the President of the American Society of Experimental Pathologists in 1962-1963, the year of the Society's fiftieth anniversary.

From 1965 to 1970, he served as the Executive Director of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda Maryland. His vision and enthusiastic leadership set the scene for a new phase of Federation affairs resulting in considerable growth in services to the scientific community. Next he was appointed to be the Dean of the Medical University of South Carolina.During his four-year tenure (1970–1974) as Dean of the Medical University of South Carolina, he provided the impetus for the establishment, with area hospital leaders, of a consortium of statewide hospitals for undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. He recruited an outstanding faculty with his own scholarship and academic achievements attracting many young investigators for whom he was a constant source of inspiration. Following the deanship, McManus returned to research at the Medical University of South Carolina, producing a detailed description of the histopathologic changes occurring in kidneys after long-term dialysis.