Dr. Sherif R. Zaki, who was America's chief infectious disease detective, died in Atlanta on November 21. He was 65 years old.
His wife said that he died from injuries he sustained in a fall down the stairs.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Zaki became chief of the infectious diseases pathology branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Zaki and his team made strides in distinguishing rare diseases by using a process called immunohistochemistry, which allows researchers to identify foreign pathogens by staining cells and observing them through electron microscopes.
The agency's director said that Dr. Zaki was critical in the diagnosis of unexplained illness and outbreaks that allowed C.D.C. and public health to respond more quickly and save lives.
The director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases said in an email that Dr. Zaki was considered to be the most influential infectious disease of his time. He was a generous mentor and a researcher with a great memory.
He presciently told a magazine in 2003 that he didn't see any reason why the coronaviruses shouldn't come back.
The image is.
An image of lung tissue. After studying the coronaviruses that caused the disease, Dr. Zaki said he didn't see any reason why it shouldn't come back. Sherif Zaki is a person.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Dr. Zaki determined that many people who had come into contact with letters containing a white powder had died from the disease.
He and his team helped identify a deadly outbreak of hantaviruses in the Navajo Nation in 1993 and that discovery spurred the expansion of the infectious diseases pathology branch.
The Unexplained Deaths Project was headed by him and was responsible for looking into the causes of 700 or so baffling deaths from disease that occur in the United States every year.
Dr. Christopher D. Paddock said that Dr. Zaki had a stubbornness to find the cause of disease that was unparalleled.
The cause of death for three people who received organ transplants in Massachusetts and Rhode Island was a rare disease called lymphocytic choriomeningitis. The daughter of the organ donor had a pet hamster.
A 10-year-old Mississippi boy bit a relative in 2005 after he complained to his doctor about a rash, headaches, and a fever. He died two weeks after being hospitalized.
The boy had a case of the disease a week after that. They learned that the boy had found a live bat in his bedroom after interviewing him about the dead bats.
Sherif Ramzy Zaki was born in Alexandria, Egypt. He spent his first six years in Chapel Hill, where his father was attending graduate school. He lived in the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe, where his father worked for the UN. His mother was a teacher.
He is survived by his wife, two daughters, a son and a son-in-law.
He graduated second in his class from the Alexandria Medical School in 1978. He was more interested in unraveling mysteries than he was in practicing medicine because he was so enamored with the books of Blyton.
His work at the C.D.C. was based on that obsession. In an interview with Stat, a medical website, he said that they went into the basics of how a disease happens. Putting pieces together. There are puzzles.
He earned a masters degree in pathology. He did his residency in anatomic pathology at the University of Atlanta, where he received a doctorate in experimental pathology, because autopsies were not allowed in Egypt for religious reasons.
He became a naturalized American citizen after working at the C.D.C.
James LeDuc, a former colleague, said that he was awarded the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for distinguished service.
Dr. Inger K. Damon of the C.D.C.'s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases said in an email that he was a researcher with creativity, collaboration, solid scientific methodology and a broad knowledge base.
Dr. Zaki didn't think his work would be finished.
He told The New York Times that they don't know the tip of the iceberg.
We don't have tests for the many viruses andbacteria we don't know about. People won't believe the number of pathogens we didn't know existed in a hundred years.
