Thomas Addis

Who was Thomas Addis?

Thomas Chalmers Addis Jr. was a physician-scientist who made important contributions to the understanding of how blood clots. He was a pioneer in the field of nephrology, the branch of internal medicine that deals with diseases of the kidney. Addis described the pathogenesis of haemophilia in 1911 and was the first to demonstrate that normal plasma could correct the defect in haemophilia.

Addis was the son of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Chalmers Addis, a Presbyterian minister, and Cornelia Beers-Campbell, who married in Hoboken, New York, in 1880, but he was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Addis studied medicine in his native Edinburgh, at the Institute of Pathology of Berlin Charité, and in Heidelberg. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School with a MB in 1905 and a MD in 1908.

In 1911, he took up a professorship at Stanford University, where he remained until his death in 1949. Addis married Elesa Bolton Partridge in 1913. They had two daughters, Elesa and Jean. By way of his daughter Jean, Addis is the great-grandfather of Gavin Newsom, the Lieutenant Governor of California.