Although his father's dream was for him to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree, Gregory Tignor, DSc, professor emeritus of epidemiology, explained that as a Black man living in a segregated U.S. society, “the options that your father saw for you were few. You could become a colored teacher, a colored preacher, a colored doctor, or a colored lawyer. Whatever you became, your being was always prefaced by being colored.”
Dr. Tignor was born in Washington, D.C. on September 15, 1938, the youngest of three sons of two inspiring educators, Madison W. Tignor and Ethel P. Tignor.
His parents, he said, “never dared dream of a time and place in this country where a young Negro boy could aspire to becoming a professor at a predominately white university.”
Tignor, who retired from the Yale School of Public Health in 2000, died at his home in Hamden on May 9, 2024.
He earned his Doctor of Science degree at Johns Hopkins University in 1969. After leaving Johns Hopkins he arrived at Yale where he joined the internationally known Yale Arbovirus Research Unit (YARU) as an arbovirus researcher studying viruses transmitted by blood-sucking arthropods such as mosquitoes, ticks, and biting midges.
He was an integral member of YARU, instituting stringent rules for biologic safety in laboratories where viruses were being studied. The safety reforms included anti-smoking regulations in laboratories; the use of one of the first biological safety hoods, and personal protective equipment with respirators; the adoption of devices used to avoid mouth pipetting; and ensuring that laboratories operate under negative pressure.
“Due in part to the success of some of these measures, Dr. Tignor was elected as a councilor of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and was appointed to a committee that was making recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control to reduce the risk to laboratory workers from arboviruses,” Johns Hopkins reported when Dr. Tignor received that school’s The Knowledge for the World Award in 2011.
His research focused on the identification, characterization, and pathogenesis of zoonotic viruses that cause encephalitis in humans, including rabies, Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. While conducting research in the field, he became known for developing spotted slides that could be used for rapid diagnosis with only small drops of serum.
After his retirement, he served as a consultant to the State Department’s Agency for International Development and as president of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A graveside service to celebrate his life and legacy was held on May 18, 2024, at Whitneyville Cemetery in Hamden.