Harold Amos

Dr. Harold Amos, professor emeritus of microbiology and molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School and the school ' s first African-American department chairman, died Feb. 27 at Massachusetts General Hospital from complications of a stroke. He was 84 and lived in Boston.

Dr. Amos was highly regarded as a researcher and teacher, and as a friend and mentor to hundreds of young people, especially minority scientists.

In 1958, he discovered that a compound once considered only in relation to DNA the carrier of genetic information was also present in RNA, the ribonucleic acid concerned with the transfer of amino acids.

In 1963 he was named to a tenured post as associate professor of bacteriology and immunology. His research focused on aspects of bacterial metabolism.

Above all, his friends said, Dr. Amos cared about people.

" He was the ultimate humanist, " said H.C. Huang, a scientist with a New Jersey pharmaceutical company and a former student of Dr. Amos ' at Harvard. " Harold was a most humble person. He had a profound belief in the potential of everyone, regardless of their station in life or their career stage. "

Though he chose a career in science, he was accomplished and interested in many other fields, said his brother, Howard Amos of Pennsauken, N.J. He could have taught mathematics or literature, his brother said, and excelled as a classical pianist, a violinist, and a tennis player.

But science won out, especially after Dr. Amos studied as a Fulbright scholar during 1951-52 at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

" Harold said he wanted to be a scientist and, if he had to scrub floors with a toothbrush, he would be one, " his brother said.

Dr. Amos was an unabashed Francophile, stemming from the time he spent in France in the military during World War II and at the Pasteur Institute. He spoke fluent French, read French poetry, and enjoyed the country ' s food and wines.

Dr. Amos was born in the small New Jersey town of Pennsauken, one of nine children of a mail carrier and a homemaker. Their mother, reared in an orphanage, worked as a domestic for a prominent New Jersey family until her own family got so big that she had to stay at home.

Both parents insisted their children do well in school.

In 1936, Dr. Amos graduated first in his class from Camden High School. He attended Springfield College in Springfield, Mass., on a full scholarship, graduating in 1941 with a degree in chemistry.

Drafted into the Army in World War II, Dr. Amos was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps as chief warrant officer and arrived on the beaches of Normandy six days after the invasion.

Under the GI Bill, he earned his master ' s degree from Harvard and his doctorate from the Harvard Medical School Division of Medical Sciences. In 1954 he became an instructor in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at Harvard Medical School.

From 1968 to 1971, and again from 1975 to 1978, he served as chairman of the department, now called the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. He was named the Maude and Lillian Presley professor of microbiology and molecular genetics in 1975 and became emeritus in 1988.

Dr. Amos also served as chairman of the Division of Medical Sciences from 1971 to 1975 and from 1978 to 1988.

In 1983, Dr. Amos supported the establishment of the Hinton-Wright Society to support minority students at the Harvard medical and dental schools.

For more than a decade he directed the Minority Medical Faculty Development Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and was instrumental in creating minority programs at the National Institutes of Health and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

In 2001, his friends and former students established the Harold Amos Fund, an endowed graduate student fellowship for students in the department he had chaired.

Because of his cancer-related research, Dr. Amos was appointed by President Nixon in 1971 to the National Cancer Advisory Board. For more than 30 years, he served in various leadership positions with the American Cancer Society.

In his retirement, Dr. Amos continued his work to recruit minority students into biomedical careers at both Harvard and Springfield College. He served on Springfield ' s board for many years.

Dr. Amos is survived by his brother; four sisters, Iola Thomas and Margaret Johnson, both of Pennsauken, N.J., Joyce Hester of Toms River, N.J., and Florine Williams of Lawnside, N.J.; four nieces; and three nephews.