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Alexander C. Sonnenwirth was born in Oradea, Romania into a German-speaking Jewish family. In addition to German, Sonnenwirth learned Romanian, Hungarian, and Hebrew as a child. After completing his secondary education, Sonnenwirth went to Budapest to stay with relatives while he worked as a photographer. However, World War II shattered the world in which he and his family lived. Most of the Jews of Oradea, including Sonnenwirth's parents, were sent to death camps by the German invaders. Sonnenwirth escaped that fate, but was forced to serve in a labor gang for the duration of the war until he was rescued by Allied forces.

Immediately after the war, Sonnenwirth lived in a camp for displaced persons in Marburg, Germany. He was awarded a Hillel Scholarship which enabled him to come to the United States to study bacteriology at the University of Nebraska. After earning a Bachelor's degree in 1950, Sonnenwirth continued his studies at Purdue University where he graduated with a Master's of Science in 1953. While a student, he married Rosaline Soffer, and in 1953, the Sonnenwirths moved to St. Louis when he was appointed Assistant Director of the Division of Bacteriology at Jewish Hospital.

Sonnenwirth became the director of the division in 1955 and began doctoral studies in bacteriology at Washington University. Studying under Dr. Theodore Rosebury of the School of Dentistry, Sonnenwirth received his PhD in 1960. In addition to his duties at Jewish Hospital, Sonnenwirth served several academic appointments including Instructor of Bacteriology in the School of Dentistry (1958-1961) and as Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine for the Departments of Microbiology (1962) and Pathology (1968). In 1970, he was promoted to Associate Professor in the latter two departments and became a full Professor in 1977.

Sonnenwirth's scientific contributions included both 'pure' research and innovation in clinical technology. His chief research specialty was the study of anaerobic gram-negative bacilli. His enormous knowledge in this and related fields was expressed in the publication of over one hundred scientific papers and summarized in his editorship of the sixth, seventh, and eighth editions of Gradwohl's Clinical Laboratory Methods and Diagnosis (1963, 1970, 1980). He and his colleagues of the Microbiology Laboratory at Jewish Hospital were leading evaluators of new equipment and procedures, particularly of automated testing instrumentation.

Sonnenwirth was for many years a key participant in professional associations of microbiologists and their conferences, symposiums, and seminars. This activity included extensive travel within the U.S. and abroad. Sonnenwirth is remembered for his services to the American Society for Microbiology, having been among the organizers of the Clinical Microbiology Section in 1963 and its chairman from 1970 to 1973. Sonnenwirth was chosen by the American Society for Microbiology to receive its highest professional recognition, the Becton-Dickinson Award, in 1984.

Jessie L. Ternberg, PhD, MD, received her undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in 1946 and her doctorate in biochemistry from University of Texas in 1950. During her time at Texas, she and Robert Eakin discovered the mechanism by which the vitamin B-12 is absorbed in the intestine. She received her medical degree from Washington University in 1953 and interned at Boston City Hospital after graduation. Ternberg returned to Washington University for her research fellowship and surgery residency at Barnes Hospital becoming the first female resident in surgery at Barnes Hospital and Washington University. She joined the faculty in 1959 as an instructor of surgery, eventually reaching full professorship in 1971 as professor of surgery and associate professor of surgery in pediatrics. She was the first female surgeon on the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine. In 1972, Ternberg was appointed as the chief of the newly created Division of Pediatric Surgery. She was the first woman to be elected head of the faculty council. On her retirement in 1996 she was made professor emerita of surgery and surgery in pediatrics.

Throughout her career, Ternberg made significant contributions to medicine in her research. Her best-known study is the appliance of electron spin resonance spectrometry to the investigation of free radicals. She also published A Handbook of Pediatric Surgery in 1980, which became a standard reference book for doctors due to its emphasis that children must be treated different from adults since diseases take different form in adolescents. Ternberg received wide recognition, including awards such as the Washington University Alumni Award, the International Women's Year Award for Health Care, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Woman of Achievement Award and membership in Alpha Omega Alpha. Washington University School of Medicine established the Jessie L. Ternberg Award in 1998, which is given annually to a female medical school graduate who best exemplifies Ternberg's "indomitable spirit of determination, perseverance and dedication to her patients."

Lee Robins was born Fannie Lee Nelken in New Orleans. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University's Radcliffe College in 1951 after training in the 1940s under Talcott Parsons. During grad school at Harvard, she met and married Eli Robins, one of the leaders of the new biological psychiatry who joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1949.

Robins joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1954 as research assistant in psychiatry and by 1966 had risen to full research professor of sociology in psychiatry. From 1987-1997, she led the master's program in psychiatric epidemiology at the School of Medicine. She was also professor of sociolgy on the Danforth campus. A prolific writer, she authored almost 250 papers and enjoyed nearly continuous grant funding throughout her career. She was the recipient of nearly 30 awards including top honors in the fields of addiction, criminology and public health.

Her first major study in the middle 1950s was a long term follow-up of children and adolescents treated in the Saint Louis Child Guidance Clinic. She and psychiatrist Patricia O"Neal saved the clinic's patient records from destruction and together they located 95% or 524 men seen at the clinic as children from 1924-1929 along with 100 controls from the same neighborhood. The resulting book, Deviant children grown up, helped move behavioral science from speculation based on anecdote into empirical science based on objective patient records.

The Nixon White House selected her as principal investigator on a report on heroin and narcotics use and addiction among Vietnam veterans in the early 1970s. She followed a large random sample of returning soldiers. She found drug use and addiction remained constant at about 1% and that 'most of the kids who used heroin in Vietnam, ...came home, didn't use it anymore and had no problems.'

Late in the 1970s, Robins and her colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry developed the Renard Diagnostic Interview, a assessment tool based on the Feighner psychiatric criteria. Darrell Regier of the National Institute of Mental Health asked her to develop a similar structured interview for the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Surveys (ECA) based on the DSM-III criteria. The result was the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS). The goal of the ECA was to assess the mental health of large population samples and the very structured DIS allowed trained non-clinicians to do the interviews effectively. St. Louis was selected as one of five interview sites. The high visibility of the ECA study encouraged epidemiologists world wide to replicate ECA in their own countries. These replications allowed more precise cross-national comparisons and encouraged Robins and others to develop the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI).

*Source: Helzer, John, "Lee Nelken Robins: 29 August 1922-25 September 2009," Addiction, Volume 105, Issue 10, pages 1856-1858 (October 2010).

http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80033571

Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; est. 1948; located in Palo Alto, Calif.; not the same as the Kaiser Foundation, Oakland Calif., which is now no longer in existence) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80043670

Lauren Vedder Ackerman was born in Auburn, New York in 1905. In 1927, he received a bachelor's degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He received his medical degree at the University of Rochester in 1932. In 1942, following residences in California and Massachusetts, he became Chief of Laboratories at Ellis Fischel State Cancer Hospital in Columbia, Missouri. He would become the medical director of that institution.

In 1948, he was appointed professor of pathology at Washington University School of Medicine where he taught for 25 years. He also served as the director of the school's Division of Surgical Pathology and as pathologist-in-chief at Barnes Hospital. Later in his career, he joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1973.

Dr. Ackerman contributed more than 200 papers and abstracts and wrote several textbooks that are standards in the pathology field. In 1947, he co-authored Cancer: Diagnosis, Treatment and Prognosis. He later wrote Surgical Pathology in 1953 which set the standard for the practice of that specialty. He was credited with establishing surgical pathology as a separate medical specialty that involves the diagnosis of disease based on surgical biopsies. He died in 1993 at the age of 88 in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/30/obituaries/lauren-ackerman-88-professor-and-an-author-of-medical-texts.html

found: Information converted from 678, December 12, 2017(Established in 1913 as City of Hope Hospital [no publ. in LC/NLM databases]. Began research under the name City of Hope National Medical Center in 1952. Also known as City of Hope Medical Center from 1955 until around 1970, at which time it again assumed the name of City of Hope National Medical Center. Consists of five major divisions: 1. Hospital for Tumors and Allied Diseases, 2. Hospital for Cardiac Diseases, 3. Hospital for Respiratory Diseases, 4. Division of Post-Graduate Medical Education, 5. Medical Research Institute)
found: Wikipedia, May 7, 2018(The Jewish Consumptive Relief Association was chartered in Los Angeles, California, to raise money to establish a free, non-sectarian sanatorium for persons with tuberculosis. The association purchased 10 acres of land in Duarte, California, approximately 16 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and dubbed the property the Los Angeles Sanatorium. Opened January 11, 1914. The sanatorium was nicknamed "the city of hope," With tuberculosis becoming less prevalent, executive sanatorium director Samuel H. Golter began an initiative in 1946 to transform the sanatorium into a full medical center, supported by a research institute and post-graduate education. The Los Angeles Sanatorium officially changed its name to City of Hope National Medical Center in 1949) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Hope_National_Medical_Center#FundraisinSources

International Society of Surgery was founded 1902 in Brussels. Its headquarters are in Brussels.

Founded 1903; reorganized and incorporated 1926

found: Information from 678 converted Dec. 8, 2014

Viktor Hamburger was a German-American biologist who was born in 1900. Hamburger attended the Universities of Breslau, Heidelberg, Munich, and Freiburg, receiving his Ph.D. in zoology under the supervision of Hans Spemann in 1925. He came to Chicago in 1932 as a Rockefeller fellow to work in Frank R. Lillie’s laboratory at the University of Chicago, studying the embryology of the chick embryo. While in Chicago, Hamburger was dismissed from his faculty position in Germany due to the rising Nazi party’s policies, and he chose to remain in the United States.

In 1935, Hamburger joined Washington University as an assistant professor of zoology. He served as chairman of the Department of Biology from 1941 to 1966. Though he retired as professor emeritus in 1969, Hamburger continued his research until the mid-1980s. Hamburger is best known for his work in experimental embryology, neuroembryology and the study of programmed cell death.

William Don Owens, M.D. is a clinically oriented anesthesiologist with strong interests in teaching and clinical outcomes research. He earned his M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1965. Following a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy in anesthesiology, he trained in anesthesiology at Massachusetts General Hospital before serving on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Owens came to Washington University in 1973. He became full professor in 1981, and he served as chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology from 1982-1992. During this period, he was also anesthesiologist-in-chief for Barnes's and Children's Hospital. In 1998, Owens served as president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). He became emeritus professor at Washington University in 2004.

Eli Robins received his medical degree from Harvard University University Medical School in 1943 and did his residency in psychiatry. In 1949-1951, he learned from Oliver Lowry about brain biochemistry at Washington University School of Medicine as a US Public Health Service fellow. He joined the faculty and administration of Washington University School of Medicine in 1951, serving as: instructor in neuropsychiatry (1951-1953), assistant professor (1953-1956), associate professor (1956-1958), professor of (1958-1966), Wallace Renard Professor of psychiatry (1966-), and head of the psychiatry department (1963-1975).

Robins was affiliated with Barnes Hospital from 1951-1994 and for many years psychiatrist in chief (1963-1975). He was at the forefront of American psychiatric medicine bringing scientific research from the Freudian approach that dominated the 1940s to an empirical scientific approach based on diagnostic criteria. Modern research into biomedical and social factors in psychiatric disorders followed the agreement of clinicians and researchers on diagnostic criteria. Eli Robin's own research interest was in chemical aspects of brain function and psychiatric illness, specifically the causes of suicide and the neurochemistry of psychiatric disease such as manic depressive disorders, depression, schizophrenia, and multiple sclerosis.

Sources: Amer. Men & Women Sci, 13th ed. 1976 ; Bauer, Dale R., "A letter from the publisher," Medical World News, March 29, 1970; Washington University Record, January 19, 1975; "Eli and Lee Robins," Washington University Magazine, Fall 1973.

Lawrence W. O'Neal was a 1946 graduate of Washington University School of Medicine, obtaining his degree in three years in the wartime accelerated program. His post-graduate training in surgery was at Barnes Hospital, after which he remained on the staff at Barnes. He has contributed to medical literature as author, editor and reviewer. In addition to practicing surgery he engaged in clinical research, chiefly on endocrine subjects. He and Marvin Levin, MD, established and edited a volume on diabetic foot problems in 1973. This work has gone into seven editions and has been published in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. He received the Alumni Achievement Award from Washington University in 1991.

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/stltoday/name/lawrence-o-neal-obituary?pid=158856620

China Medical Board (U.S.); Organized in 1914 as a division of the Rockefeller Foundation, incorporated as an independent entity in 1928, name changed in 1955 to China Medical Board of New York)

found: NLM files 3/6/90(hdg.: Sources URI(s): http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82046922

Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936 despite her father's objections to her enrolling in college and his his belief that women should not pursue careers. Levi-Montalcini completed a specialized degree in neurology and psychiatry in 1940 but was forced to conduct research from her bedroom due to the Fascist laws preventing Italian Jews from practicing medicine or working in universities at that time.

After the war, Levi-Montalcini returned to work as an assistant at the University of Turin Institute of Anatomy. In 1947 she accepted an invitation to collaborate as a research associate with Viktor Hamburger, head of the Zoology Department of Washington University in St. Louis, who had been interested in articles she published in foreign scientific journals. Levi-Montalcini only planned on staying at Washington University for less than one year and ended up staying for 30 years. She became an associate professor of Zoology in 1951, and a full professor in 1958. Levi-Montalcini began dividing her time between St. Louis and Rome in the early 1960s, and established a joint research program between Washington University and the Higher Institute of Health in Rome from 1961-1969. She retired as professor emeritus of Biology in 1977.

Rita Levi-Montalcini shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1986 with Stanely Cohen for their discoveries of growth factors that expand our understanding of deformities, senile-dementia, delayed wound healing, and tumor diseases. Levi-Montalcini received many additional honors and awards throughout her career, including the Max Weinstein Award given by the United Cerebral Palsy Association in 1963. Levi-Montalcini was the first woman to receive this award. Levi-Montalcini died in Rome, Italy in 2012 at 103 years old, becoming the longest-living Nobel Laureate.

St. Louis Medical College was chartered in 1841 as the medical department of St. Louis University. The university appointed the first faculty, but allowed them to be governed by an autonomous, nonsectarian Board of Trustees. Instruction began in October 1842 in a small building that was owned by the first dean, James Vance Prather, located on Washington Avenue near Tenth Street and adjacent to the university buildings. In 1849 the college moved to a neoclassical style building at Clark Avenue and Seventh Street built by the financier John O'Fallon. Despite the nonsectarian board, public pressure -- particularly from the extreme nativist movement, the so-called "Know Nothing" party -- demanded that the department sever ties with the Roman Catholic university. In 1855, the state of Missouri granted the college a charter as an independent institution.

In the 1850s and 1860s St. Louis Medical College was so dominated by one man, the second dean, Charles Alexander Pope that it was commonly referred to as "Pope's College." There was some literal truth to the name, because Pope owned the Seventh Street building outright. On Pope's death in 1870, his colleagues were forced as a group to raise funds to buy the facility. That group organized under the name of the Medical Fund Society of St. Louis.

In the 1870s the curriculum of the college was reformed and expanded. By 1880, all students were required to matriculate for three years before receiving a diploma. In 1891, St. Louis Medical College became affiliated with Washington University and was designated its medical department. For eight more years, however, the old name was maintained, and the medical school was known jointly as the Washington University Medical Department and Saint Louis Medical College. This dual name was dropped only when the Missouri Medical College affiliated with the university in 1899.

In 1892 the Medical Fund Society and Washington University sponsored the construction of a new facility at 1804 Locust Street. The building was praised for being "commodious and well planned." But less than twenty years later, the same building was devastatingly criticized by Abraham Flexner in his famous report to the Carnegie Commission. With the reorganization of Washington University School of Medicine in 1910, most of the remaining traditions of St. Louis Medical College were abandoned in the interests of progressive medical education.

Horace Mitchell Perry, Jr., graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in 1946. A specialist in hypertension and stroke, H. Mitchell Perry continued his research at Washington University School of Medicine after retiring as director of the hypertension division in the early 1990s. He served as a physician coordinator for the national Veterans Administration Hypertension Program and as director of the Hypertension Screening and Treatment Program for the Department of Veterans' Affairs in Washington DC, until his death.

In the early 1950's, Perry was a member of the first American group to succeed in medically treating hypertension. In collaboration with foundations such as the World Health Organization, Perry traveled the globe with his wife, Betty, to determine whether environmental factors in different cultures may influence the risk of hypertension and stroke.

*Source: Outlook Magazine, Spring 2002.