Leslie Brent: junior member of the “holy trinity of immunology”
BMJ 2020; 368 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m977 (Published 10 March 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;368:m977
Photo credit: Steve Back/Daily Mail/Shutterstock
As a doctoral student at University College London, Leslie Baruch Brent was the co-discoverer of acquired immune tolerance with his department head, Peter Medawar, and a doctoral researcher, Rupert Billingham. Their work revolutionised understanding of what was involved in transferring tissue from one person to another, providing the basis for tissue and organ transplantation—and the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives.
The three were dubbed the “holy trinity of immunology,” and their work underpinned research in the area for decades. The groundbreaking paper, “Actively acquired tolerance of foreign cells,” was published in Nature in 1953, the same year as Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA.
After jointly winning the Nobel prize in 1960 with the Australian immunologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Medawar shared his prize money with Brent and Billingham and wrote: “I wish to make it absolutely clear that it is in no way a present but comes to you as of right.”
In another act of generosity, Medawar, with Billingham, invited their young protégé to give the first talk on their work in 1953 to the Society for Experimental Biology. Photographs of adult white mice with healthy brown skin grafts astonished the packed hall.
In 2013 the Transplantation Society celebrated the Nature paper’s 50th anniversary by inviting Brent to repeat his 1953 talk, calling it “probably the most important paper in the history of transplantation.”
In 1956 the trinity published their extended findings in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the world’s first science journal. In 2015 their work featured in an analysis of 18 of the most influential papers in the journal’s 350 year history.
Life and career
Brent’s dazzling career included four years as professor of zoology at the University of Southampton and 20 years as professor of immunology at St Mary’s Hospital, London. He encouraged the first research on HIV/AIDS by Tony Pinching and established the University of London’s first masters course in clinical immunology.
Born Lothar Baruch in in Köslin, Germany, Brent was forced to leave school in 1936, aged 11. Hoping to shield him from persecution, his parents put him into a Jewish orphanage in Berlin—a lifesaving decision. Three weeks after the infamous Kristallnacht (Nazi attacks in November 1938 that foreshadowed the Holocaust), Brent was on the first Kindertransport bringing young Jewish people to safety in Britain. Unbeknown to him for many years, the Nazis murdered his mother, father, and sister.
In a stroke of extraordinary good fortune, he attended Bunce Court, a progressive German-Jewish boarding school in Kent, where fellow pupils included the painter Frank Auerbach, the musical humourist Gerard Hoffnung, and the theatre critic and playwright Frank Marcus, author of The Killing of Sister George.
When he was 16, the charity funding him ran out of cash. He became a chemical laboratory assistant and studied part time. Two years later he volunteered for the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Selected for officer training, he was told to change his name. The Germans would have executed him for treason and being Jewish if he had been captured. Wanting to keep his original initials, he chose Leslie after the actor Leslie Howard and Brent from the phone book. The reintroduction of Baruch came later.
Brent served in Italy and with the British Army of the Rhine. On discovering the fate of his family, he had brass commemorative plates set in the pavement outside their former home.
Research
Demobbed in 1947, Brent studied zoology at the University of Birmingham, where he became president of the students’ union. He was student of the year, although he narrowly missed a first, and also a leading sportsman. Medawar, his zoology professor, invited him to do a doctorate.
Renowned for his mild manner and kindness, Brent remained in good health into his 90s. His hundreds of publications include A History of Transplantation Immunology (1996) and Sunday’s Child (2009), a thought provoking memoir.
Brent worked with the Association of Jewish Refugees to highlight the role that the Kindertransport played in saving his life and to campaign on current policy on refugee children in the UK. He was awarded an MBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List “for services to Holocaust education and the field of immunology and organ transplantation.”
His hobbies included walking, climbing, film, theatre, and singing. For many years he sang with the Crouch End Festival Chorus in north London.
His first marriage, to Joanne Manley, ended in divorce. He leaves Carol Martin, a psychotherapist, whom he married in 1991; three children from his first marriage; three stepchildren; and nine grandchildren.
Leslie Baruch Brent (b 1926; MBE), died from multiple infections on 21 December 2019