Earl W. Todd, who started as a laboratory glassware washer at Western Reserve University and worked his way up to a member of the University's immunology research teams, died October 24 after he was involved in a car accident on River Road in Hunting Valley. He was 73.

Through his work at what is now the CWRU Pathology Institute, University Hospitals of Cleveland and the Stokes VA Medical Center, Todd participated in several medical discoveries. He spent most of his career working on complement, a complex system of serum and cell-bound proteins that protect against bacteria and viruses. In the 1950s, he helped develop a controversial system for cleaning proteins that is now considered standard procedure.

He was doing research at the Stokes VA Medical Center when he retired in the mid-1990s.

A Cleveland native, Todd graduated from Glenville High School and took courses at Cleveland College, a division of Western Reserve University for undergraduate adults.

Despite his unconventional instruction, Todd co-authored more than 20 papers published in scientific journals.