John Alexander Oates III Biographical File

Oates was born in Fayetteville NC and earned a BS from Wake Forest Univ., 1953, and an MD from Bowman Gray (now Wake Forest) School of Medicine 1956. He interned and then was a resident at New York Hospital—Cornell U. Medical Ctr., NYC and worked as a clinical associate, then senior investigator at the National Heart Institute.

In 1963 he joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, where he worked until his death, and was named professor of Medicine and Professor of Pharmacology, Werthan Prof. of Investigative Medicine, 1974-1984, chairman of Vanderbilt Dept. of Medicine (1983-1997), Director of the Center for Clinical Pharmacology at Vanderbilt, He was the Thomas F. Frist, Sr., Professor of Medicine and Prof. of Pharmacology, and created Vanderbilt’s Department of Clinical Pharmacology. Vanderbilt established the annual John A. Oates and Meredith S. Oates Lectureship in Clinical Pharmacology in 2006 in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Oates. He retired as chief of medicine at VU at age 65 and was still actively involved in medical research up until his final illness. Source: https://www.crawfordservices.com/obituary/john-oates-iii