Medics

Maria de Sousa ‑ a Portuguese immunologist, poet and writer – died on April 14 2020 due to COVID‑19. Maria gained international recognition as a medical researcher, as the author of several seminal scientific papers: she was the first to describe thymus-dependent (or T cell) areas in 1966, a fundamental discovery in the mapping of peripheral lymphoid organs; and coined the term "ecotaxis" in 1971, to describe the phenomenon of cells of different origins to migrate and to organize among themselves in very specific lymphoid areas. Later, in the 1980s she focused on the study of hereditary hemochromatosis, an iron overload genetic disease.   Maria de Sousa died in Lisbon on 14 April 2020, a victim of that year's coronavirus pandemic, after a week in the intensive care unit of São Jos...