Born: August 28, 1918
Died: August 6, 2000
Married: Annette Lambie
Children: Leon Tsao, Aimée Tsao, Karen Tsao, Kelvin Tsao
Makepeace Uho Tsao was a patient at the Trudeau Sanatorium in 1938-39. He recovered enough to return to the University of Michigan where he was a graduate student. After completing his doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry in 1944, he discovered that he had TB in one of his kidneys and had the kidney removed. Then he spent nearly a year recovering before he could continue doing research in biochemistry in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases.
In 1952 he became an assistant professor and was eventually promoted to associate professor. He helped develop the PKU test that saved many children from mental retardation, and also devised a series of neonatal blood tests requiring mere drops of blood that spared babies from having to give relatively large quantities for testing. In 1967, he accepted a position in the new medical school at the University of California, Davis, where he did research and taught in the Department of Surgical Research before retiring in 1982.
He died in 2000 from Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome after having surgery to implant a pacemaker. Two years before, on his 80th birthday, he told me that he had originally believed he wouldn't even live past 30, and having lived to 80 he had gotten 50 extra years!
Information provided by his daughter, Aimée Tsao, in 2016.
See also:
- University of Michigan Faculty History Project, Makepeace Uho Tsao
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