Recruited by Dr. Evan Calkins, UB’s first university-wide Medical Department chairman, Dr. Nolan came here in 1963 as an assistant professor of medicine at one of the university’s teaching hospitals, Buffalo General Hospital, and in 1969 was promoted to full professor and chief of medicine at Buffalo General.
Dr. James P. Nolan Jr., 92, liver disease expert, UB medical department chairman | Featured Obituaries
Returning to New Haven in 1958, he spent a year as a fellow in liver diseases at Yale Medical School and chief resident in medicine at Grace-New Haven Hospital, now Yale New Haven Hospital.
In 1979, he became chair of the Department of Medicine at the UB Medical School and was appointed director of medicine at Erie County Medical Center. As chairman, he strengthened the collaboration between the School of Medicine and its teaching hospitals.
“He was a kind gentleman,” said Dr. Jan Novak, longtime head of the gastrointestinal department at ECMC who Dr. Nolan recruited from Yale. “He was powerful, but he didn’t abuse the power. He was good to everybody.”
Dr. Nolan was known for his discoveries about the role of intestinal endotoxins in causing toxic liver damage. From the time he first proposed the connection in the mid 1960s, he published more than 100 articles and lectured extensively in the U.S., Europe and Japan.
He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Medicine Experimental and Clinical, and as a reviewer for a number of leading journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and Annals of Internal Medicine.
