Jews in Biomedical Science
JEWS IN THE MEDICAL & LIFE SCIENCES

Prior to presenting his appeal to Oliver Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews, who had been expelled from England in 1290, Manasseh ben Israel wrote in The Hope of Israel 1: "Hence it may be seen that God hath not left us; for if one persecutes us, another receives us civilly and courteously; and if this prince treats us ill, another treats us well; if one banisheth us out of his country, another invites us with a thousand privileges ... and do we not see that those Republiques do flourish and much increase in trade who admit the Israelites?" But it was not for their economic prowess alone that the Jews were valued, it was for a whole host of skills, not the least of which was their expertise in the medical arts.

Winston Churchill, writing of the expulsion referred to above, states: "The Jews, held up to universal hatred, were pillaged, maltreated, and finally expelled from the realm. Exception was made for certain physicians without whose skill persons of consequence might have lacked due attention."2 Indeed, more often than not, the chief court physicians of the rulers of Europe were Jews or crypto-Jews. To cite but a few examples, Frederick III of the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I of England, Louis XIV of France, Catherine de Medici, and Catherine the Great of Russia all at one time or another employed Jewish personal physicians.3 Nor was it only the secular rulers of Christendom that depended on Jewish medical skills. As the Spanish philosopher and theologian Ramon Lull (Raymond Lully) complained in the thirteenth century: "Jews are universally entrusted by the great with the care of their health. Nor is the Church free from this abomination, for nearly every monastery has its Jewish physician."4 Among the many Popes who maintained Jewish personal physicians were Martin IV, Nicholas IV, Boniface VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII, Paul III, Gregory XV, Urban VIII, and Innocent X.5

Much the same situation prevailed in Dar al-Islam, where, e.g., Maimonides served as court physician to Saladin the Great's Vizier Al-Fadhil and later to Saladin's son and successor. Jews also figured prominently as translators and transmitters to the Moslem world of the medical scholarship of the ancient Greeks, and would later play a similar role in transmitting to Europe the scholarship of Moslem physicians such as Avicenna. In the late Middle Ages, the Jews, numbering only about 1% of Europe's population, constituted roughly half of its physicians.6 During the last of the great European Jewish expulsions in the 1930s, the medical centers of Vienna and Berlin lost nearly half of their physicians and the majority of their medical school faculties.7 Many fled to America, helping to fuel its meteoric rise to preeminence in biomedical research; Jews have accounted for some 40% of US Nobel Prizes in medicine and constitute over one-third of the combined membership of the life sciences divisions of the US National Academy of Sciences and its affiliated Institute of Medicine.

The following links contain lists of prominent Jewish scientists and recipients of major international awards in the biomedical field. The last link below contains an analysis showing that of all the lives saved by all the scientific and medical advances in human history, more than three-fourths of those lives were saved by advances for which Jews constituted fifty percent or more of the principal developers.

Jewish Biomedical & Life Scientists

Jewish Recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (26% of recipients)

Jewish Recipients of the Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research (31% of recipients)

Jewish Recipients of the Gairdner Foundation Awards (27% of recipients)

Jewish Recipients of the Wolf Prize in Medicine (42% of recipients)

Jewish Recipients of the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (42% of recipients)

Jewish Recipients of the Albany Medical Center Prize (47% of recipients)

Jewish Recipients of the GM Cancer Research Foundation Sloan Prize (38% of recipients)

Jews Among the Creators of History's Greatest Lifesaving Medical & Scientific Advances (estimated 2.8 billion lives saved)

Some of the more notable Jewish contributions to the medical and biological sciences in the modern era are listed below. (The names of non-Jewish scientists mentioned in the accompanying discussion have been denoted with the superscript "+" in order to avoid confusion.)

The invention of local anesthesia by Carl Koller and the discovery of Novocaine by Alfred Einhorn.

The discovery that pancreatic dysfunction is the cause of diabetes by Oskar Minkowski (together with Joseph von Mering+) and subsequent work on the involvement of the islets of Langerhans by Moses Barron. The work of the Canadian team that isolated insulin (Banting+, Best+, Collip+, and Macleod+) was based on these two prior discoveries. Earlier work on the use of pancreatic extracts in the treatment of diabetes by Israel Kleiner in the US and Georg Zuelzer in Germany had come close to discovering insulin.

The discovery of the ABO and other human blood groups and of the Rh factor by Karl Landsteiner. (The M, N, and P blood groups were co-discovered with Philip Levine and the Rh factor was co-discovered with Alexander Wiener). Landsteiner received the 1930 Nobel Prize for this work, which made safe blood transfusions possible for the first time. Landsteiner is also considered to be one of the giants of immunology, having made major contributions to the understanding of the chemical basis of antigen-antibody interaction.

The introduction of the side-chain theory of antibody formation by Paul Ehrlich, which has evolved into clonal selection theory, the central paradigm of modern immunology. Ehrlich shared the 1908 Nobel Prize with Élie Metchnikoff* for their independent contributions to immunology. Ehrlich is also considered to be the founder of modern chemotherapeutic medicine. His development of Salvarsan (1909) and Neosalvarsan (1911) constituted the first effective treatment for syphilis and, in the words of Sir Alexander Fleming+, "the beginning - and a magnificent beginning - of bacterial chemotherapy." 9

The isolation and development of penicillin by Sir Ernst Chain. Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for this work with Sir Alexander Fleming+ and Sir Howard Florey+. It was Chain who recognized the potential of Fleming's+ nearly forgotten discovery of the antibacterial properties of Penicillium molds (one of many agents then known to have such properties). Chain, a biochemist, was able to isolate the active antibacterial substance, viz., penicillin, and to work out its molecular structure (later confirmed in the Nobel-Prize-winning x-ray diffraction work of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin+). Using samples that Chain produced, Chain and Florey+ demonstrated penicillin's stability, nontoxicity, and effectiveness against staphylococcal, streptococcal, and clostridial infections in laboratory animals and humans.

The development of streptomycin by Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz. Waksman received the 1952 Nobel Prize for this work, which created the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, for which (in combination with other drugs) it remains a therapeutic mainstay.

The development of isoniazid by Herbert Fox and Harry Yale. Although isoniazid, the leading drug used in the treatment of tuberculosis since the mid-1950s, was first synthesized in 1912 by Josef Mally+ and Hans Leopold Meyer (who later died in the Nazi concentration camp at Terezín), its anti-tubercular properties were not discovered until the early 1950s, when it was independently re-synthesized and clinically explored by three separate groups. These were headed, respectively, by Fox at Hoffmann-La Roche, Yale at Squibb, and Gerhard Domagk+ at Bayer. Isoniazid, used early on in combination with streptomycin and a third drug, para-amino salicylic acid (PAS), and more recently in combination with other drugs, has saved over a hundred million lives since the 1950s. (PAS was developed by Jörgen Lehmann+ in Denmark, based on studies carried out by Frederick Bernheim in the US. In these studies, Bernheim established the metabolic role of salicylic acid in the tubercle bacillus. PAS is basically designed to interfere with these salicylate-dependant metabolic processes, ultimately impairing or killing the bacillus.) In a related, but separate development, iproniazid, an isoniazid derivative first synthesized by Fox in 1951 as a potential anti-tubercular agent, was found to have powerful anti-depressant effects. It subsequently became the basis for the MAOIs (mono-amine oxidase inhibitors) that revolutionized the treatment of clinical depression in the post-war period.

The isolation of cortisone by Tadeus Reichstein. Reichstein shared the 1950 Nobel Prize with Edward Kendall+ and Philip Hench+. Reichstein and Kendall+ were recognized for having independently isolated and characterized the hormones of the adrenal cortex, the most important of which was cortisone.

The chemical synthesis of cortisone by Lewis Sarett*, Max Tishler, and Carl Djerassi. Sarett, working under Tishler at Merck, achieved the first chemical synthesis of the compound. With subsequent improvements by Tishler, Sarett's synthesis made cortisone a commercially available drug for the first time. Further advances achieved independently by Djerassi and by Percy Julian+ made economically viable, large-scale production possible. Sarett, Tishler, and Djerassi were all awarded US National Medals of Science (in 1975, 1987, and 1973, respectively).

The development of aspirin by Arthur Eichengrun and Felix Hoffmann+. Aspirin is an artificially modified form of salicylic acid, a naturally occurring substance that can be obtained from the bark of willow trees, whose analgesic properties have been known since antiquity. Salicylic acid is, however, very poorly tolerated by the digestive system, which greatly limits its medicinal value. Early attempts to reduce its toxicity through acetylation failed to yield acetylsalicylic acid of sufficient purity to be medicinally useful. The first successful synthesis of pure acetylsalicylic acid was achieved in 1897 by Felix Hoffmann+, working at F. Bayer & Co. in Germany. Recently developed evidence indicates, however, that credit for this development should have gone equally, or even predominantly, to Hoffmann's+ Jewish supervisor, Arthur Eichengrun.10

The discovery of prostaglandins by M. W. Goldblatt. (Also discovered independently by Ulf von Euler+.) Sir John Vane* was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982 for demonstrating that the anti-inflammatory and analgesic action of aspirin-like drugs was via their inhibition of prostaglandin production. Vane also discovered the vasodilator prostacyclin, which led directly to the development of the ACE inhibitors that are widely used in the treatment of hypertension, heart failure, and other vascular diseases. The development of the COX-2 selective inhibitors (such as the "super-aspirin" Celebrex, widely used by severe arthritis sufferers) was largely the work of Philip Needleman.

The discovery of neurotransmitters by Otto Loewi. Loewi shared the 1936 Nobel Prize with Sir Henry Dale+ for their independent work on acetylcholine. Sir Bernard Katz and Julius Axelrod shared the 1970 Nobel Prize with Ulf von Euler+ for advanced work on neurotransmitters. Their work led directly to the development of the class of anti-depressants that includes Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil. Axelrod, together with Bernard Brodie, Leon Greenberg, and David Lester, was largely responsible for the development of the pain reliever acetaminophen (Tylenol).

The discovery of endorphins and enkephalins by Solomon Snyder and Hans Kosterlitz, respectively. The discovery by Snyder of the opioid receptors in the mammalian nervous system led to the further discovery of endorphins and enkephalins, endogenous opioids that help to control mood and pain. The opioid receptors play a large role in the action of pain killers such as morphine. This new understanding of opioid action has in turn led to the development of synthetic pain killing substitutes with diminished potential for addiction. Snyder and Kosterlitz shared the 1978 Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research for this work.