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Article Evaluation

The article's tone is neutral and unbiased. Grammar and sentence structure were good. However, the History section and the Compare and Contrast of Psychological Theories of Personalities section are confusing. It is difficult and takes several readings to understand the chronological order of the reinforcement sensitivity theory and biopsychological theory of personality. I think these sections will continue to be confusing until greater detail is added.

There appears to be a decent number of sources for the length of the article. However, most of the sources used to write this article are old. Many are over ten years old and some are older than twenty years. I would suggest trying to find sources that are no older than ten years.

The talk page did not offer many critiques of the article. Most comments said the article was well-written.

Familial Life

Avery's paternal grandfather, Joseph Henry Avery, was a talented inventor, responsible for making the first thin paper able to be printed on both sides. This technique was used to print Oxford bibles, which he was presented one as a gift by the Clarendon Press at Oxford. (This is from page 49)

Avery's father, Joseph Francis Avery, born in 1846 in Norwich, Norfolk, became a Baptist minister after coming under the influence of C. H. Spurgeon, a Baptist Evangelist. He married his wife, Elizabeth Crowdy, in 1870, and spent three years in England, where he would continue his pastoral service as a Baptist. After this, he would move to Halifax, Nova Scotia with his wife, against the wishes of his friends, believing it to be the Will of God.(Everything above from page 49) He remained as a pastor for 14 years in Halifax before travelling to the Mariner's Temple in New York City, where he would preach to a rowdy and poverty-stricken crowd. (This is from Page 50) While here, he would publish an edifying pamphlet entitled "The Voyage of Life", edited the church publication Buds and Blossoms, and patented and attempted to sell a preparation known as "Avery's Auraline", though it would gain little success. When their home burned to the ground in December of 1890, the Baptist community of New York banded together to help pay for the expenses, including one John D. Rockefeller.(Everything above from page 51) He would die in 1892, leaving his wife Elizabeth Avery a widow. (Page 52).

Avery's mother, Elizabeth Crowdy, was the beating heart and soul that made her husband's church the community center it was. After Joseph Francis Avery's death, she would continue editing the publication Buds and Blossoms. She would also continue to work with the Baptist City Mission Society, where she would come into association with a number of wealthy people, including the Sloans, the Vanderbilts, and the Rockefellers. (Page 53)

Early life and Education

Oswald Avery was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia on October 21, 1877 to Francis Joseph Avery, a Baptist minister, and his wife Elizabeth Crowdy. The couple had immigrated from Britain in 1873. Oswald Avery was born and grew up in a small wooden row house on Moran Street in the North End of Halifax, now a designated heritage building. When Oswald was 10, his family moved to the Lower East Side of New York City. He earned his undergraduate degree in humanities at Colgate University and was a member of the Class of 1900.

Oswald Avery entered The College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York later that year. At the college, he made good grades in all of his courses, except bacteriology and pathology. He graduated with a medical degree in 1904, and then he began to practice general medicine. Oswald did not like dealing with patients who have chronic diseases that he was unable to fix. He practiced medicine until 1907 when he began working as an associate director to Benjamin White in Hoagland Laboratory.

At Hoagland Laboratory, he began by studying the bacteriology of yogurt and other fermented milk products and their effects on gut bacteria. He recorded his findings in “Observations on Certain Lactic Acid Bacteria of the Bulgaricus Type”. During the years 1909 through 1913, he performed medical research with bacteriological, immunological, and chemical approaches.

For a period of time, White came down with tuberculosis. Oswald Avery went with him to Trudea Sanatorium for a cure. Afterwards, Oswald went back to take vacations at the sanatorium. He became interested in tuberculosis and began doing research in the Trudea Laboratory, where he looked at the clinical and experimental aspects of tuberculosis. Here he carried out 100 consecutive blood cultures of tuberculosis patients in the active phase of the disease. He did not recover any tubercle bacilli or find any evidence of secondary infection. These findings were critical for the understanding of tuberculosis. His careful clinical investigation caught the attention of Dr. Rufus Cole at Rockefeller Institute.

At Hoagland, Avery performed a chemical and toxicological study of a product derived from tubercle bacilli. With White as a colleague, he extracted the product with alkaline ethanol. The research was published in 1912. This further showed his systematic effort to observe biological activities of pathological bacteria through an understanding of their chemical structure. In 1911, Oswald instructed staff of H. K. Mulford Company in bacteriological techniques, and they taught him the industrial methods for production of antitoxins and vaccines.

During his time at Hoagland, Oswald published nine papers, one of which was a chapter on “Opsonins and Vaccine Therapy”. He collaborated with Dr. N. B. Potter for this chapter, which was put in Hare’s Modern Treatment - a popular medical magazine at the time. Avery also taught a course to student nurses at Hoagland. During the course, he conveyed the dangers of pathogens spread through sneezing. During his teaching, he was given the nicknames “The Professor” and “Fess”. While working at Hoagland, Avery was mailed two written offers from Rockefeller Institute, and he denied them both. Avery did not accept the offer until Rufus Cole from Rockefeller came to offer the position to him in person.

Rockefeller Institute

Oswald Avery entered Rockefeller Institute as Assistant in 1913, and in 1915, he became an Associate. In 1919, Oswald was promoted to an associate member. He was granted full membership in 1923. At the institute, Cole, Avery and Alphonse Dochez developed the first effective immune serum against a strain of pneumococcus, a bacterium causing pneumonia. The serum was produced from the blood of infected horses.

Research showed that various pneumonia cultures isolated from different patients had different immunological properties. This made it difficult to develop a serum effective against all of the different strains. A serum effective against type 1 pneumonia was developed. Oswald was placed in charge of testing the serum in horses. He also had to process the serum and measure its antipneumococcal activity. While performing this work, Oswald developed a rapid culture to determine the pneumococcal types found in patients. Oswald was the senior author of the monograph Acute Lobar Pneumonia: Prevention and Serum Treatment that was published by The Institute in response to this research. Oswald also helped Dochez in his research on specific soluble substances found in the blood and urine of pneumonia patients. The presence of specific soluble substances in a urine sample allowed him to rapidly test the type of pneumonia without having to wait for a culture to grow. Oswald and Dochez realized that the capsules of different strains of pneumonia had different polysaccharide structures and concluded that polysaccharides play a role in immunological specificity - a discovery that later led to the synthesis of artificial antigens. Later, the observation that the active protein was the same for all of the pneumococcal strains, but the active protein was different from that of other types of bacteria, led Oswald to conclude that a protein determines the specificity of Diplococcus pneumoniae. Oswald became an emeritus member of The Institute upon retirement in 1943. However, he continued to work in the lab until 1948.

Retirement and Later Years

While working at Rockefeller Institute, Oswald contracted Grave’s disease. Oswald experienced mood swings of depression and irritability due to the disease. After undergoing a thyroidectomy, Oswald once again became more lively. He began sailing and fell in love with the sport. Shortly after, he retired in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived close to his brother and his brother’s family, where he was regarded not as a scientist, but as a pleasant family man and a kind country gentleman. While in the southern United States, Avery took a particular interest in the local flora and would act as a gardener would, learning about and appreciating the flowers and trees. Avery's enthusiasm toward researching nucleic acids continued into his retirement, and he would continue his work with Dr. Hugh Morgan, chairman of the department of medicine at Vanderbilt Medical School. Dr. Morgan was given a research grant from the Department of Defense to study immunity to streptococcal infection, and he convinced Avery to help him in his research. Oswald worked on this research with Dr. Bertram E. Sprofkin. The two wrote a joint report on “Studies on the bacteriolytic property of Streptomyces albus and its action on hemolytic streptococci”. During his later years, Oswald became terminally ill with extensive hepatoma, or liver cancer. He died at age 78 on February 20, 1955 and was buried in Mount Olivet cemetery in Nashville.