James Lewis

James B. Lewis (Jim) was born in December 1945 to Mary Eberle Lewis and John B. Lewis in York, Pennsylvania. John was the foreman in a machine shop. John and Mary married in 1944, a second marriage for both. John had two grown children from a previous marriage; Mary had none. Both were rather old to be becoming parents, as Mary was 36 and John was 48. In July 1949 a second son, Robert (Bob), was born.



As a youngster, Mary excelled at school, but in the tradition of her parents, a girl had no need of a high school diploma, and so she was made to leave school in the eleventh grade, against her will. She always wanted her sons to excel academically and pursue college degrees, as she could not.

In 1950 Jim contracted polio, was hospitalized, and soon became paralyzed. He recovered almost completely. The family attended a Methodist church. Another big influence on his early life was television, a revolutionary new technology in 1953. Exciting and imaginative programs, like Tom Corbett Space Cadet, began to work their magic on the Lewis boys. Tremendous interest throughout the United States in science had been generated by the atomic bomb. Science fiction penetrated deep into the psyches of Jim and Bob.

John Lewis became ill with liver cancer late in 1957 and died in January 1958. That was a huge shock to Mary, Jim, and Bob. Social security and a part-time job gave Mary enough money (barely) to live stably in their modest home in suburban York, where luckily there was an excellent high school. Jim needed little pressure from Mary to excel academically. He graduated in 1963 with a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1967 Jim won a fellowship to Harvard in biochemistry. While at Penn he had met Anita Zappala. The two married in 1967, just before moving to Boston. Their first son, John, was born in 1968. A few years later their second son, Chris, was born, just before Jim accepted a postdoc to Switzerland. In 1970 he took a position at the famous Cold Spring Harbor Lab on Long Island, run by James Watson. It was stressful work with long hours, and unfortunately Jim and Anita split up in 1977. Jim left Cold Spring Harbor in 1980 and moved to Seattle where he was a research scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He stayed there until 1987. He then became a Senior Research Investigator at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, also in Seattle.

About this time Jim became very impressed with the prospect of nanotechnology, which means manipulating molecules and atoms very precisely to produce new medical breakthroughs. Research and writing about this became the dominant theme of the rest of his life.

Meanwhile he showed himself to be a conscientious father. Anita and the boys stayed on Long Island. Jim would make two or more trips every year to see them, his mother, and brother, also in the East. Jim liked to take John and Chris skiing in the winter.

Around 1998 he met Gina Miller. They were drawn together at first by mutual interest in nanotechnology. They married in May 2000, and were happily married in a loving relationship for 25 years until his death.

A big life event occurred in 2004, when Jim was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Fortunately, living in Seattle, he had access to cutting edge treatment with stem cells. It was successful and he went into full remission, even though there were side-effects that became troublesome as the years passed.

Jim had left Bristol-Myers Squibb in 1996. Jim and Gina moved to Saratoga Springs, Utah, in 2010. Until 2017 he worked for the Foresight Institute and consulted in various capacities. He then, finally, got his "dream job" as a writer and researcher at Nanofactory CBN. He enjoyed the work, the contacts, and the travel to meetings. Unfortunately a reorganization ended that position in January of 2024.

Meanwhile, increasing health difficulties were slowing him down and making speaking and hearing difficult. He suffered a stroke in February 2025 and died on April 6, 2025.

He is survived by his wife Gina, his brother Bob (wife Susan), sons John B. Lewis II (wife Bridget) and Christopher Lewis(Kyle), three grandchildren, a niece, and several cousins. Plans for a memorial service have yet to be ironed out.