Science has made amazing progress over the past 60 years, and Brother Elmer has worked on the front lines—from the early days of computers to his current work at California Institute of Medical Research in San Jose.

“At St. Edward’s University in the late ’60s, they trained me on the IBM 1620,” he says, chuckling. “The students who were learning Fortran would turn in punch cards, and I would run printouts when I wasn’t teaching algebra and biology lab.”

By that time Brother Elmer had already spent two decades teaching math and science and pursued his master’s degree in New Mexico. Then, just when many people tended to settle into predictable careers, he did what many Holy Cross Brothers have always done: He sought a challenging new path.

“I was on the faculty at St. Ed’s for 18 months, then started graduate school in microbiology,” he recalls. “The study of microbes and bacteria, and immunology in host-resistant systems, was pretty primitive when I got into it. Then, just like computing, the field exploded.”

Brother Elmer went on to earn his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Texas. Following that, he did two years of post-doctoral work in immunology at Baylor College of Medicine. He spent a year at San Antonio’s State Chest Hospital, and from there he went to New York University for three years on a U.S. Public Health fellowship.

“This was an opportunity to go to a lab that was, at that time, prominent in cellular immunology,” he explains. “We conducted pure research on transfer factor, which was a hot topic.”

His fellowship finished in 1979, and he began working with the immunology of primary fungal infections at the California Institute for Medical Research. Today he continues working half-time in the labs, and 2004 marks his 25th anniversary there. He has taken two sabbaticals in Japan, the first for six months in 1989, doing medical mycology and collaborating on a chapter of a book.

“I was invited back in 1998 for three months,” he says, “by the Research Center for Pathogenic Fungi in Chiba, a suburb of Tokyo. I lived in an apartment across the street from the center, and I was able to go to Mass at church, where I remember bowing instead of genuflecting.”

Today his research focuses on reversing fungal infections in patients whose immune systems are compromised.

“I’m trying to write up the results now,” he says during a conversation in early fall 2003. “Last month the Journal of Immunology published an article that picked up on what we are doing. These scientists’ work in a liver transplant unit in Germany is different from ours, but it could demonstrate what we were planning to demonstrate. This is very exciting for us, since their results will bolster the research we are doing.”

One of Brother Elmer’s other jobs is to be a mentor for MDs that are on clinical research fellowships administered through Stanford University, with which the Research Center is affiliated.

“They’re MDs who choose to try to do basic research, so they pick a project that we work on, and I more or less help them along with basic research methods,” he explains. “More recently I’ve had a number of volunteers; most are from India. Usually this is way for them, while they’re waiting to take the U.S. Medical Examination, to beef up their resume for the internships. Most of them have gotten internships and residencies over the past 10 years. I enjoy this mentoring—they assist me very well, because they are very reliable and intelligent people.”

In a few years, Brother Elmer will mark his 60th year as a Brother of Holy Cross. He has conducted pure research in breakthrough arenas, from New York to California and Japan, and his name appears on articles in many scientific journals. Yet for a Brother of Holy Cross, he reminds a visitor gently, “The work is supposed to be secondary to our life in prayer and community.

“My research is very interesting and time-consuming,” he explains, “but every day I come home to our community of 12 Brothers. There is always somebody to talk to, and people to share your religious exercises.”

A young man interested in religious life might find this paradoxical. Yet this is the difference between any other man of science and a Holy Cross Brother. Elmer Brummer finds scientific research, which is geared to measurable results, deeply rewarding. But above all he values the immeasurable scope of God’s love and inspiration at work in our lives.