Dr. Roland Harrison Ingram, Jr.

Roland Harrison Ingram, Jr., physician, scientist, teacher, died  July 7, 2008, at his home in Atlanta, Georgia.  He was 73. Dr. Ingram was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of Florence Emerson and Roland Harrison Ingram, Sr.  He attended Birmingham public schools and graduated from Ramsay High School where he lettered in both football and track and field, received the Harvard Book Award as the most outstanding Junior, was a member of the National Honor Society, received the Exchange Club Scholarship Award for the highest scholastic average in the graduating class, and served as President of the student body. At the University of Alabama, he received the Druids award as the most outstanding freshman and the Alpha Epsilon Delta award as the most outstanding pre-medical student. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and received the John E. Foster award for the highest scholastic average in his graduation class. At the Yale University School of Medicine he received many awards including the Perkins Prize highest average in the pre-clinical studies, Ramsey Prize for best performance in his first clinical year and the Campbell Prize for the highest scholastic average in the graduating class. He was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha in his junior year. He completed his Medicine internship at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (later to become the Brigham and Women's Hospital) in Boston following which he spent two years in Japan with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


He returned to Yale where he completed his Internal Medicine training. After completing a fellowship in Pulmonary Diseases at Columbia, he joined the faculty at Emory University School of Medicine where he received The Most Outstanding Clinical Teacher award from the Emory class of 1969 and ascended to the rank of full Professor and Director of the Pulmonary Division before being recruited back to the Brigham as Director of the Pulmonary Critical Care Division. He became the Parker B. Francis Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. During these years he built an internationally recognized division replete with outstanding clinicians, teachers and researchers.  Fellows trained during those years now occupy many important leadership positions here and abroad. His research, focused on the pathophysiology of asthma and other airway diseases, resulted in 160 original scientific publications. His scholarly contributions include multiple chapters in 10 consecutive editions of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, Associate Editor and author of multiple chapters in the American College of Physicians textbook of Internal Medicine. Honors include the establishment of the Ingram Divisional Library at the Brigham in 1990, and the establishment of the Ingram Honorary Lecture at Emory in 1998. He served as President of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and received the Trudeau Medal, a lifetime achievement award for outstanding clinical contributions, teaching and research in Pulmonary Diseases from the ATS and the American Lung Association. After returning to Emory in 1992, he became the Chief of Internal Medicine and the Martha West Looney Professor at Emory Crawford Long Hospital. In addition he served as Director of the Pulmonary Division at all of Emory's hospitals. During this time he received two Golden Apple Awards for excellence in teaching.  Since his retirement he was an active volunteer teacher of residents and medical students, including volunteer teaching and clinical services at Grady Memorial Hospital.


He is survived by his wife of forty-seven years, Marguerite Colville Ingram; his daughter Mary Elizabeth Tengler of Chattanooga; two sisters, Virginia Lou Justiss and Mary Florence Snow, of Birmingham and one brother, William Emerson Ingram of Birmingham. A memorial service will be announced later. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations be sent to the Roland H. Ingram Honorary Lecture Fund, Emory University Medical School, 1440 Clifton Road, Suite 440, Atlanta, GA 30322 or to the Olmstead Linear Park Alliance, PO Box 5500, Atlanta, GA 31107. A. S. Turner & Sons