1. Professor Emeritus, University of Melbourne; Carden Fellow in Cancer Research, Division of Cancer and Hematology, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia
2. Renee and Robert A. Belfer Professor of Developmental Biology, Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
3. President, CEO, and Founder, BetaStem Therapeutics
4. Co-head of the Stem Cell Regulation Unit, Head of the Purton lab, associate director, St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research
Ray Bradley, a pioneer in the area of hematopoiesis, died in Melbourne, Australia, on August 9, 2013.
Ray completed his MSc degree in Physiology at Melbourne University in 1950 and graduated with his PhD from the University of Reading, UK, in 1956. In 1957, he returned to Melbourne University and continued his work on pituitary hormones. From 1960 to 1962, he was a visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute (NIH) where, with Robert Roosa and Lloyd Law, he learned techniques for the culture of normal and transformed lymphoid cells.
Returning to the Physiology Department at Melbourne University, he focused on the culture of primary lymphoid and hematopoietic cells, recognizing the importance of cell-cell interactions mediated by soluble growth factors. These studies culminated in the development of the seminal in vitro agar culture technique for the proliferation and differentiation of granulocyte/macrophage progenitors, published in collaboration with Donald Metcalf (Bradley and Metcalf. Aust. J. Exp. Biol. & Med. 1966;44:287) and subsequently used to quantitatively assay both progenitor cells and growth factors. This assay is still used, for example, to assess the robustness of donor cells prior to cord blood transplantation.
In 1975, Ray became deputy director of the Biological Research Unit of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute in Melbourne, which was directed by his friend and collaborator, George Hodgson. Together, they carried out pioneering studies on hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell hierarchy, demonstrating that bone fide stem cells are non-cycling (Hodgson and Bradley. Nature. 1979;281:381) and that clonal proliferation and differentiation of these primitive, multipotent cells require multiple growth factors (Bradley and Hodgson. Blood. 1979;54:1446). Ray was a wonderful mentor and a firm believer in scientific transparency and collaboration. He did not discriminate between undergraduates and senior scientists, and his openness encouraged many stimulating scientific discussions from which he derived much pleasure.
Ray was a jazz enthusiast, who played amateur cornet and loved listening to live and recorded jazz. Upon his retirement in 1988, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Victorian Jazz Archive Museum. A wonderful family man, Ray was predeceased by his wife of 44 years, Val, and he is survived by four children and six grandchildren, who adored him. Those of us who were fortunate enough to know Ray respected his persistence, his originality, his honesty, his curiosity, his generosity, his disdain for underserved authority, his respect for humanity, his love of life, and his enthusiasm.
