Dr. Walter A. Scott, a University of Miami professor of biochemistry and molecular biology since 1975, who conducted breakthrough HIV-AIDS research, died Jan. 28, just four days before his 70th birthday.

Born Feb. 1, 1943 in Los Angeles and raised in Oregon, Scott was known for his work on HIV resistance to the drug AZT, and for mentoring hundreds of students during nearly 40 years of running a molecular virology research lab at UM’s Miller School of Medicine. He died after suffering a stroke, according to information provided by UM.

Scott was married for 42 years to Dr. Gwendolyn D. Scott, a UM pediatrics professor whose work on mother-to-fetus AIDS transmission significantly reduced the disease in newborns.

“He enjoyed nature. He loved the Everglades and birding, but his first love was the laboratory,’’ Gwen Scott said in a UM news release. She directs UM’s Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease and Immunology.

Her husband “always was very interested in scientific questions and stimulated by thinking about and teaching science, but he had a wonderful sense of humor, Gwen Scott said.