Maria de Sousa


Maria de Sousa was a Portuguese immunologist, poet and writer. She gained international recognition as a medical researcher, as the author of several seminal scientific papers: she was the first to describe thymus-dependent 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 José Hospital. Among the many top figures in Portuguese science and society that paid homage to Sousa, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, issued a statement offering his condolences to the family, referring to her as a "unmatched figure in Portuguese science" and underscoring her "inescapable legacy in science and great example in rigor, exigence, and civic and cultural commitment".

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