Michael Gordon Mage, DDS, Captain USPHS Ret., passed away peacefully on March 9, 2025 at his home in Bethesda, MD.

Dr. Michael Gordon Mage was born August 17, 1934 in New York, NY, the second of four sons of Dr. Myron Mage and Mildred Farber Mage. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and attended the High School of Music and Art. He went to Cornell University in 1951, on a New York State Regents Scholarship, where he majored in Spanish Linguistics. He graduated A.B. in 1955, and married his college sweetheart, Rose, in the same year. He studied dental medicine at Columbia University from 1955 to 1960; his father and grandfather were both dentists. A National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR) post-sophomore fellowship in immunology from 1957-58, at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, kindled what would be a lifelong study of immunology. Upon gaining his Doctor of Dental Surgery in 1960, he took up an NIDR postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology from 1960-1962.

In 1962 he entered the U.S. Public Health Service and went to the National Institutes of Health, where he would remain throughout his career in public service as a research scientist. At NIH, he worked at first in the NIDR, and from 1966, in the Laboratory of Biochemistry, at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) until 1999. Already in 1990-91, he spent a year as Sabbatical Scientist with Dr. David Margulies, then he was detailed to the Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), from 1999 to 2005, when he became scientist emeritus. He remained  scientifically active into his final years, continuing to collaborate with Dr. Margulies and his research group, a co-author of an article in the Journal of Immunology in May 2022, in his eighty-eighth year.

During Dr. Mage's long scientific career he witnessed and participated in the great transformations of biomedical sciences in the second half of the twentieth and first two decades of the twenty-first century, in particular in the advances in immunology that have been foundational for the development of novel immunotherapies. His scientific accomplishments range from the early applications of computer programming and automated digital data acquisition to the analysis of amino acids (1965), the development of innovative methods of immune cell and antibody fragment purification (1968,1976,1980), to the design and characterization of the first recombinant single chain beta2-m-MHC molecules (1992)  and single chain MHC-II molecules (1997), and contributions to structural studies on TAPBPR and tapasin (2017, 2018). Together with his wife Rose, also an immunologist at the NIH, he traveled extensively in the service of science and over the years they hosted many visiting international scientists, students, and post-doctoral fellows at their respective laboratories. He was the exemplar of a supportive spouse, at a time when women were still a small minority in the scientific community.

Dr. Mage was a member of the American Association of Immunologists, the American Chemical Society, Federation of American Scientists, and the American Association of the Advancement of Science. His honors received include: election to membership in Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society; and the Public Health Service Commendation Medal.

Dr. Mage was active in the American Civil Liberties Union, serving as Co-Chair of the Montgomery County Chapter of the ACLU of Maryland for many years.

Dr. Mage gardened together with neighbors in a community vegetable garden in Bannockburn. He and his wife Rose were avid folk dancers since their college days at Cornell. In the 1990s and 2000s Dr. Mage enjoyed sailing with the NIH sailing club at Selby Bay, MD. He enjoyed hiking, twice making  treks in the Himalayas in Nepal, and frequently enjoyed hiking the trails closer to home at the Shenandoah National Park, when he and his wife Rose would visit the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival.

Dr. Mage had a passion for languages and literature, especially poetry. He spoke several languages, including Spanish, Japanese, and German. He would share his enthusiasm for literature through surprise gifts of books in the mail. He wrote many ballads and topical songs himself, and knew countless songs ranging from traditional folksongs to the bards of our times. He could quote an apposite line from a song or poem for just about any situation.

Dr. Mage was a multi-instrumentalist, most notably a carillonneur and a Cornell Chimesmaster since his undergraduate days. Dr. Mage played carillons from Berkeley to Berlin, and continued up to his final year to visit Cornell regularly, and play his beloved chimes in the Cornell bell tower.

He is survived by his wife, Dr. Rose G. Mage, his sons Gene and Dan, his daughter Anita, his brother John, three grandsons, five nieces, and three nephews.

A Memorial Gathering will be held on April 27, 2025, 11 am, at the Bannockburn Community Clubhouse, 6314 Bannockburn Drive Bethesda, MD 20817 (Driveway entrance to the Clubhouse is physically located on Laverock Lane).

Memorial donations may be made to:

ACLU Foundation of Maryland, online at:

https://action.aclu.org/give/tribute-aclu-md

or by check payable to: ACLU Foundation of Maryland

ACLU Foundation of Maryland 3600 Clipper Mill Rd., Ste. 200 Baltimore, MD 21211