This obituary is part of a series about people who died from the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.
Most Americans became aware of chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that is more common than syphilis, gonorrhea, and herpes, in the mid-1980s.
Julius Schachter, a microbiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, had been studying the bacterium that causes chlamydia for two decades. In fact, studying chlamydial disease along with its diagnosis and treatment spanned his entire career.
Dr. Schachter died on December 20 in a San Francisco hospital. He was 84 years old. The cause was complications from Covid-19, said his daughter Dr. Sara Schachter.
Julius Schachter, known as Julie, lived in Germany most of the time. He’d flown to the Bay Area for Thanksgiving in November.
His most significant work was on chlamydia-related trachoma, an eye infection that was one of the world’s leading infectious causes of blindness until 1990. He noted the effectiveness of treatment with the mass distribution of the oral antibiotic azithromycin (until then the disease was treated topically), said Dr. Thomas M. Lietman, director of the Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Ophthalmic Research at UCSF and a long-time colleague of Dr. Schachter.
“Everyone in the healthcare sector is taught that unspecific antibiotic use is prohibited,” said Dr. Lietman. In areas where trachomas have been found regularly, however, it is too difficult to determine who exactly is infected. “Julie’s jump was to treat the entire community, whether it was infected or not.”
The trachoma is expected to be cleared for health reasons by 2030, thanks in part to Dr. Schachter.
Julius Schachter was born on June 1, 1936 in the Bronx. His father Sam was a furrier, and his mother Mary (Kudisch) Schachter was an employee of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. Julius was the first in his family to go to college.
He received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Columbia University in 1957, his master’s degree in physiology from Hunter College in 1960 and a PhD. in bacteriology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965.
His first job was as an assistant to the research microbiologist at UCSF. He spent the next 55 years there.
He married the physiotherapist Joyce Poynter in 1962. She died in 1990.
Dr. Schachter traveled constantly to work and, thanks to frequent flyer miles, often took his family on international trips, said veterinarian Sara Schachter. She recalled a harrowing incident in 1986 when she and her brother and father were on board a flight from Rome to Athens and a bomb exploded. Four passengers died after being sucked out of a hole made by the explosion. Some oxygen masks were jammed and could not fall. a quiet Dr. Schachter used a pocket knife to tear them loose for fellow travelers.
Dr. Schachter married Elisabeth Scheer, also a microbiologist, in 2018. They lived in Nussloch. In addition to her and his daughter, Dr. Schachter a brother, Norbert; two sons, Marc Schachter and Alexander Scheer; and three grandchildren.
Dr. Schachter continued to work while in hospital with Covid-19. Dr. Lietman told of a conversation the day his friend was taken to the intensive care unit.
“I have to get out of here,” said Dr. Schachter. “I have to finish these four manuscripts.”
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