Related to the latter, he created the Lawless Department of Dermatology in Beilinson Hospital, Tel Aviv, Israel.
[1][10] In 1920 he was named a Rosenwald Fellow in Medicine—an award targeting top black medical students—and thereby received $1,200 ($18,000 in current dollar terms).
[1][10][13][2] He noted later that "it was a noteworthy fact in my own life experience that of the twelve letters [of recommendation for study abroad] that I received, eleven were from Jewish physicians.
[1][10] He became an instructor and research fellow at Northwestern University Medical School the same year, and taught there as a professor of dermatology and syphilology until 1941.
[citation needed] Lawless performed research on syphilis, leprosy, sporotrichosis, and other skin diseases.
[18] He also developed special treatments for skin damaged by arsenical preparations, which were commonly used during the 1920s against syphilis, and was one of the first doctors to use radium to treat cancer.
[18][16] Between 1921 and 1941 he published ten papers on dermatology, which including studies on warts, sporotrichosis, the use of colloidal mercuric sulphide, arsenicals, the treatment of early syphilis with electrically induced fever, tinea sycosis of the upper lip, tularemia, and congenital ichthyosiform erythroderma.
[12][11][13][14][16][22] He also created the T. K. Lawless Student Summer Camp Program for Talented Children for the scientific training for Israeli children at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel;[12][23] the Lawless Clinical and Research Laboratory in Dermatology of the Hebrew Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel.
[15] He thus repaid support received from Jewish doctors in obtaining his appointment to his position at the University of Paris.
[27] In 1967, ground was first broken for the Theodore K. Lawless Gardens, in his honor and of which he was a principal, a 13-acre 514-unit middle-income housing project at 35th and Rhodes Avenue on Chicago's South Side.
[16] In 1954, Lawless won and became the 39th recipient of the NAACP Spingarn Medal, presented annually to a Black American of distinguished achievement, for his contributions as a "physician, educator and philanthropist".
[32][33] In 1967 he received University of Kansas Distinguished Service Citation, and the City of Hope Golden Torch Award.
It was originally collected by the Harmon Foundation as part of a project to document noteworthy African Americans.