Dr. Diane E. Griffin, a noted virologist and former chairwoman of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, died Monday of heart failure at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center. The Cockeysville resident was 84.
"Diane was an incomparable teacher, mentor, scientist, leader and human being whose kindness and civility elevated the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg and university communities," said Dr. Ellen J. MacKenzie, dean of the Bloomberg School. "She was an exceptionally bright light in the world of public health, and she will be missed by colleagues and friends around the world."
Mary Diane Edmund, daughter of Rudolph Edmund, a geologist, and Doris Edmund, an early childhood education expert, was born in Oklahoma City and raised there and in Rock Island, Illinois.
After graduating in 1958 from Putnam City High School in Oklahoma City, she earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1962 from Augustana College in Rock Island. She obtained her medical degree in 1968 and her Ph.D. in 1970, both from Stanford University.
Dr. Griffin completed both an internship and residency at Stanford University Hospital and came to Hopkins in 1970, where she was a virology fellow for three years.
While she was a student at Stanford, she met John W. Griffin, a fellow medical student, whom she married in 1965.
Dr. Griffin was an expert on alphaviruses, acute encephalitis, HIV and malaria.
"Her contributions to the field include demonstrating that measles virus infection causes death primarily by increasing susceptibility to other infections," according to a Bloomberg School statement. "Her work has been cited more than 24,700 times."
When a deadly Ebola outbreak occurred in 1995, Dr. Griffin told The Sun, "It isn't as though the United States is immune to these diseases that we consider Third World diseases. It's like tuberculosis -- you quit paying attention because you've thought you've accomplished everything. And before you know it, you're in trouble again."
It was Dr. Griffin who persuaded media mogul and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to fund the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute with a gift of $100 million, where she served as founding director from 2001 to 2007.
"She was a true physician-scientist and a stellar citizen of the university who worked tirelessly in the service of the academic and scientific enterprise, championing research that served the public good and improved public health, especially through the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute -- an endeavor she envisioned and brought to life," Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels said in a statement.
At the time of her death, Dr. Griffin was chairwoman emeritus of Bloomberg's W. Harry Feinstone Department of Molecular Biology and was vice president of the National Academy of Sciences.
She had worked the Friday before she died and had planned on working through 2027, said a son, C. Todd Griffin, of Brooklyn, New York.
"Her hobby was traveling, which she did for work, learning and pleasure," her son said. "Several years ago, she passed the million-mile mark. The only place she hadn't visited and where she wanted to go was Easter Island."
Her husband, who was the chairman of the neurology department at Hopkins and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Brain Institute, died in 2011.
Plans for a memorial service to be held in the spring of 2025 are incomplete.
In addition to her son, she is survived by another son, Erik Edmund Griffin, of England; two sisters, Janice Mauras, of New York City, and Linda Kuntzman, of Rancho Palos Verdes, California; and three grandchildren.