Moultrian receives national recognition

Published 1:35 pm Monday, March 18, 2019

MOULTRIE, Ga. — The American Society of Andrology (ASA), the national professional society for the biology and medicine of male fertility, has recently announced that the 2019 recipient of its most prestigious honor, the Distinguished Andrologist award, is Terry T. Turner, Ph. D., of Moultrie.

Turner is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and a present member of the faculty of the Georgia South Family Medicine residency program at Colquitt Regional Medical Center.  

The Distinguished Andrologist award annually recognizes one individual whose career has provided outstanding contributions to the progress of andrological sciences or medicine, the society said in a press release.

Turner received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1975 after which he took post-doctorate training at the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio then joined the Department of Urology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He eventually held full professorships at UVA in both the Department of Urology and the Department of Cell Biology. Turner retired in 2008 after a career in research and teaching that focused on the basic biology of male fertility and of the pathologies leading to male infertility.

“His laboratory investigations were supported by multiple NIH research grants, his mentorship brought new scientists and physicians into the field of andrology, and his leadership and service at the institutional, national, and international levels were important to the advancement of andrological and urological science,” the press release said.  

 In 2014, Turner and his wife, Susan (née Stegall) of Moultrie, returned to Colquitt County and now reside at the Turner family farm in the Murphy Community of Colquitt County. The Turners have a daughter, Heather, who is a unit coordinator nurse at the UVA Medical Center in Charlottesville, Va., and a son, Patrick, who teaches science and engineering at Florida Prep Academy in Melbourne, Fla.

Turner writes for general audiences on topics other than science using the pen name of David Donovan. He has published three books, “Once a Warrior King” (McGraw-Hill, 1985), “Murphy Station” (University of Tennessee Press, 2010), and “Counterinsurgency: What the United States Learned in Vietnam, Chose to Forget, and Needs to Know Today” (MacFarland, 2015).

For both his scientific work and his writing, Turner received the Colquitt County Career Achievement Award in 2013.