L. Jackson Roberts II ’65
Dr. Lyman Jackson “Jack” Roberts II ’65, an internationally known clinical pharmacologist in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, died May 31, 2023, in Nashville. He was 79.
When he enrolled at Cornell he expected to return to Muscatine, Iowa, and work for the family auto parts businesses. Instead, he took a physiology course from Professor T. Edwin Rogers ’39 that sparked an interest in science. Many years later, when he was honored with an endowed chair at Vanderbilt, he named it the T. Edwin Rogers Chair in Pharmacology.
Following graduation from Cornell, Roberts earned a medical degree from the University of Iowa, completed a residency at Washington University in St. Louis, and began a fellowship in clinical pharmacology at Vanderbilt. He joined the faculty in 1977.
Among his best-known work was the discovery, with Jason Morrow in 1990, of isoprostanes and for subsequently pioneering research that established their role in atherosclerosis, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases. In the 1980s he and three colleagues showed that low-dose aspirin halted downstream production of a blood-clotting compound, providing the basis for clinical trials utilizing low doses of aspirin that demonstrated a reduced risk of clot-induced heart attacks.
He authored more than 400 scientific publications. In 2001 he received the National Institutes of Health MERIT Award.
Roberts had a passion for boating, was an excellent water and snow skier, and a talented pianist. He is survived by his wife, Vicky, two sons, seven grandchildren, and three step-grandchildren.
