father of Garry Trudeau, Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau (born July 21, 1948), public figure, cartoonist/creator of the Doonesbury comic strip.

"Dr. Francis B. Trudeau, founding president of the Trudeau Institute, a research organization in Saranac Lake, N.Y., that specializes in determining how the body's immune system is damaged by disease, died on Tuesday at the Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake. He was 75 and lived in Saranac Lake.

The cause was heart complications from amyloidosis, said his son, Garry, the creator of the "Doonesbury" comic strip. Amyloidosis is a systemic disease of unknown cause in which damage to the heart and other organs results from deposits of the protein amyloid.

The Trudeau Institute, which opened in 1964, was a successor to a pioneering tuberculosis sanitarium that Dr. Trudeau's grandfather founded in 1884. In recent years, the institute has done AIDS research.

In 1990, a scientific newspaper, The Scientist, cited the Trudeau Institute as one of "a few small independent research institutes in this country that carry just as much clout (or more) as do the 'monoliths of medicine.' " The Scientist ranked the Trudeau Institute seventh on a list of 20 high-impact independent biological and biomedical research institutions in the United States, based on the number of scientific publications it produced and the number of times the papers were cited in other scientific papers.

Dr. Trudeau came from a long line of doctors. His grandfather, Edward Livingston Trudeau, who suffered from tuberculosis, pioneered in treating tuberculosis patients with fresh air and rest. He established the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium and created the first research laboratory for tuberculosis in the United States. The sanitarium later was named the Trudeau Sanitarium in his honor.

In the mid-1950's, after the introduction of antibiotics that cured the disease, it was widely believed that the worldwide scourge of tuberculosis had been defeated and that sanitariums had outlived their usefulness. Dr. Francis Trudeau stopped his fledgling medical practice for three years and, using the proceeds from the sale of the Trudeau Sanitarium, created and began staffing the institute, to be devoted to basic biological research.

Dr. Trudeau said he intended to create an institute "that provided an optimal contemplative environment for the pursuit of research, that stood alone, unencumbered by administrative duties or the politics of a university, with the freedom to do research whenever you wish."

Francis Berger Trudeau was born in Saranac Lake on July 21, 1919, and graduated from Yale in 1942. He was in the Navy in World War II and said he first became interested in medicine after he was wounded in North Africa. Dr. Trudeau graduated from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1950. He trained as an intern and resident at Bellevue Hospital and New York University and took further training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.

Dr. Trudeau considered himself a country physician, and from 1954 until he retired in 1985, he practiced internal medicine in Saranac Lake. From 1960 to 1977, he was chief of medicine at the General Hospital of Saranac Lake.

In addition to his son, Dr. Trudeau is survived by his second wife, Ursula Wyatt Trudeau, and two daughters, Jeanne Fenn, a photographer, and Michelle Trudeau, a correspondent for National Public Radio, and five grandchildren. His marriage to Jean Moore Amory of Vero Beach, Fla., ended in divorce in 1960." ~ New York TImes