Jeremiah (Jere) Mead, architect of the field of respiratory mechanics and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), passed away on July 4, 2009, at a health care facility in Ellsworth, ME. He was 88 years old. Working in the 1950s with then-research fellow Mary Ellen Avery, Mead showed that fatal respiratory distress syndrome in newborns was caused by abnormal surface tension in the lungs.
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