David Lagunoff, M.D.: 1932-2020

08/31/2020

David Lagunoff, M.D., a former chair of pathology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, died Aug. 3, 2020, in Lund, Sweden. He was 88. 

An academic most of his career, Lagunoff was a pathologist and cell biologist who studied mast cells and the allergic response. More recently he researched and wrote about science history.

Lagunoff came to Saint Louis University in 1979 to chair the Pathology Department, a position he held for more than 20 years. After his semi-retirement, he returned to New York City in 2004 and worked at UMDNJ (now Rutgers New Jersey Medical School).

Lagunoff was born March 14, 1932, in New York City to Robert and Cecile Lagunoff. He grew up in Mt. Vernon, New York, and Riviera Beach, Florida, and attended high school at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, where he met his future wife, Susan Powers.

Lagunoff earned an M.D. from the University of Chicago in 1957 and went on to become a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, in the Department of Pathology. He was an award-winning medical school lecturer known for injecting humor into his lectures with a collection of science-related cartoons and his children remember him being much sought after on campus with students running after him across the quad.

He spent two sabbatical years abroad with his wife and children, first as a research fellow at the University of Copenhagen in 1962-64, and again at Oxford University in 1969-70.

In 2014, Lagunoff retired to Lund, Sweden.

He was preceded in death by his parents, sister Lynne Gordon, brothers Robert and Alan Lagunoff, and wife Susan Lagunoff, to whom he was married for more than 50 years.

He is survived by his three children Rachel, Liza and Michael Lagunoff; son-in-law Curtis Eberhardt; daughter-in-law Linda Zuckerman; grandchildren Sasha Eberhardt, Max and Zack Lagunoff; several nieces and nephews; and by his partner in Sweden, Marianne Hessel.

Full obituary