Endowed Lectures

Dr. William Shelley was born on April 25, 1928 in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended college at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) graduating in 1949. After graduating with second highest stand in the pre-medical course, Dr. Shelley entered the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he earned his Doctor of Medicine in 1953. He continued at Johns Hopkins for his residency training, completed a one-year fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York with renowned Dr. Fred W. Stewart, and then returned to Johns Hopkins to become Chief Resident in 1959. He joined the faculty in 1960 as assistant professor and head of Surgical Pathology and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1964. Dr. Shelley participated in a six-month visiting professorship at the American University in Beirut in 1965.

In 1970, Dr. Shelley left Hopkins to accept a position as Director of Pathology at Charlotte Memorial Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. On September 11, 1974, returning on a professional trip from Charleston, South Carolina, he suffered injuries in an Eastern Air Lines crash at the Charlotte/Douglass International Airport. Dr. Shelley was flown to the Air Force Burn Center at San Antonio, Texas, where he died of his injuries on October 10, 1974. On Sunday, October 13, 1974, a memorial service was held at VMI's Memorial Garden where his ashes were strewn following the service, which concluded with a three-volley salute and the playing of Taps.

Joseph C. Eggleston, M.D. was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He received his bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 1958 and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins in 1962, and completed his internship and residency at Hopkins. Dr. Eggleston also served as a captain in the United States Air Force Medical Center from 1963 to 1965. In 1969, he joined Johns Hopkins as a pathologist and assistant professor of pathology, and worked at Hopkins as professor and director of surgical pathology and as a pathologist for nearly 20 years until his death from lung cancer in January 1989 at the age of 52. As a surgical pathologist, Dr. Eggleston was instrumental in confirming and verifying critical diagnoses for thousands of patients and supporting the work of dozens of researchers at Hopkins.

Deeply committed to the field of pathology, Dr. Eggleston authored more than 150 scientific publications. He wrote the AFIP Fascicle on Lung Cancer Pathology a standard in the field for many years, and also co authored basic reference works on lung tumors. He developed and published a primary reference work on immunostaining methods which greatly enhanced pathologists’ ability to study and glean information from tumors and other disease processes.

Dr. Eggleston served as vice president of the American Registry of Pathology and was a member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Surgical Pathology. He also served on several national scientific advisory committees for the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute , and was president elect of the Arthur Purdy Stout Society of Surgical Pathologists and councilor at large of the Maryland Society of Pathologists. He also was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Omega Alpha, the International Academy of Pathology, the American Association of Pathologists, and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.

Paul M. Ness, M.D. earned his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his medical degree and completed his internship at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Before embarking on residency, Dr. Ness worked as a staff associate in the Division of Blood Diseases and Resources at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He first came to Johns Hopkins in 1974 as a resident in the Department of Medicine. After completing his residency, as well as post-doctoral fellowships in medicine at Johns Hopkins and in hematology and oncology at the NIH and the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Ness joined the Hopkins faculty in 1979 in the Departments of Pathology, Medicine, and Oncology. He retired in 2022. 

Over more than four decades, Dr. Ness became a luminary at Johns Hopkins and in the field of Transfusion Medicine internationally. He served as Director of the Division of Transfusion Medicine for 38 years and led the Chesapeake Region American Red Cross for 15 years during the height of the HIV epidemic. During his remarkable career, Dr. Ness participated in a number of seminal NIH-funded studies assessing the initial risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV and hepatitis in the United States, Asia, and Africa; served as editor of the journal Transfusion; and was President of the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies. 

For more than 40 years, Dr. Ness has inspired others through his dedication and commitment to excellence in medical education, research, and clinical care. 

From 1993 to 2000, Fred and Janet Sanfilippo were the “first family” of the Department of Pathology. During that time, Dr. Sanfilippo was the Baxley Professor and Director of the Department of Pathology at Johns Hopkins, and Mrs. Sanfilippo served as the Assistant Provost and Director of City and Community Relations for the Johns Hopkins University. Together, they made a significant impact on the success of the Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the Johns Hopkins University.

As Director, Dr. Sanfilippo helped nurture the growth and development of the newly united Department of Pathology which brought together the departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the School of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Health System. His emphasis was on alignment, culture, and innovation. That focus led to the creation of the current Pathology division structure, the Johns Hopkins Medical Labs, the graduate program in Pathobiology, and the Comprehensive Transplant Center, of which Dr. Sanfilippo was the Research Director. During his tenure, the Department of Pathology saw significant increases in sponsored research, fellowships, educational programs, clinical services and quality, departmental space and funding, and the recruitment of 75 new faculty, many of whom are still in the department today.