Dr. Paul Southern's career took him around the world as he studied and educated others about infectious diseases. He went to Belize to investigate a parasitic infection, and to Kuwait and Japan to lecture medical students and others in the field.

Now, after 47 years of treating patients and running a research lab at UT Southwestern, Dr. Southern has been appointed Professor Emeritus of Pathology.

“There have been few faculty who embody the ideals of service, collegiality, professionalism, mentoring, and dedication to patients, colleagues, and trainees that Dr. Paul Southern displayed through his career at UTSW,” said Dr. James Malter, Professor and Chair of Pathology. “He trained dozens of internists and pathologists who became leading figures in the field of microbiology and he published extensively. His fund of knowledge was legendary, especially of the unique and odd diseases that often presented at Parkland Memorial Hospital.”

Dr. Southern actually spent most of the last 65 years at UT Southwestern, arriving in 1955 for his first year of medical school. The Fort Worth native also completed his residency and a fellowship in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology here.

After brief stints in private practice and as an Assistant Professor elsewhere, he returned to UT Southwestern in 1974 as an Associate Professor and became Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program. In 1992, he attended the prestigious London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and earned a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene.

In his office in the Charles Cameron Sprague Clinical Science Building on South Campus, a photo of himself with family members at Peru’s famed Machu Picchu sits atop one bookcase, while a mock-up of London’s Notting Hill Gate Tube station sign is perched on another.

“It’s been interesting intellectually. It’s been fun,” Dr. Southern, 87, said of his decades at UT Southwestern. “I’ve had a lot of good colleagues who I count as friends. I’ve had supportive department chairs.”

Just as Dr. Southern was stepping back from active medical practice and research, a new infectious disease – COVID-19 – was spreading around the world. A former UT Southwestern infectious disease fellow, Dr. Francis Riedo, was in the news as he treated COVID-19 patients in Washington state.

Dr. Southern said he exchanged emails with Dr. Riedo, but did not miss being caught up in the whirlwind. He had been involved with epidemics before.

He recalled treating patients for the Hong Kong flu in the late 1960s. Then there was SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002. In 2009, H1N1 influenza, also known as the swine flu, hit Dallas. “There were big pandemics of the flu every few years.”

Then, in 2012, the mosquito-borne West Nile virus spiked in Dallas. “We had a lot of patients at Parkland,” he said.

As a young physician, it did not take long for Dr. Southern to notice that Parkland, Dallas County’s publicly supported hospital, treated a lot of patients suffering from tropical diseases due to Texas’ proximity to Mexico. Chagas, spread by bloodsucking bugs called triatomines, in particular caught his attention. The infection can lead to inflammation of the heart or brain and remain in the body for decades.

Over the past 15 years, Dr. Southern focused on Chagas’ disease, spending time in Belize and Guatemala to study the disease and finding it more widespread than originally thought.