George A. Jervis

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George Amede Jervis (born August 15, 1903 in Lucera , Italy , † June 5, 1986 in Stony Point , New York , USA ) was an American physician from Italy. In 1947 he discovered the disturbed conversion of phenylalanine to tyrosine as the cause of the congenital metabolic disorder phenylketonuria (PKU) first described by Ivar Asbjørn Følling .

Career

Jervis completed his medical studies in Turin in 1927, obtained his doctorate in neurology and in 1932 in Milan in psychology . From 1934 he worked in the USA. There he worked as a psychiatrist at Columbia University and at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where in 1947 he discovered the enzyme deficiency that is the cause of phenylketonuria - a genetic disorder that leads to severe mental retardation, if not early on Infancy is treated. He found the connection between biochemistry and genetics in brain dysfunction.

Jervis was director of research for the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation in Washington from 1962 to 1971 and director of the Basic Research Institute of the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities from 1967 until his retirement in 1973.

The George A. Jervis Clinic at the Institute for Basic Research (IBR) in New York is named after him.

He was married to Ruth Shoemaker (1922-2017), with whom he had a son and two daughters.

Awards

  • 1967 Winner of the Joseph P Kennedy International Award in Mental Retardation

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Columbia University in the City of New York - Catalog 1939-1940 https://archive.org/stream/catalogue1939colu#page/n0/mode/2up/search/Jervis
  2. ↑ George A. Jervis: Studies on Phenlypyruvic Oligophrenia. The Position of the Metabolic Error. In: J. Biol. Chem. Volume 169, 1947, pp. 651-656. http://www.jbc.org/content/169/3/651.full.pdf
  3. ↑ George A. Jevis Clinic https://opwdd.ny.gov/institute-for-basic-research/jervis-clinic
  4. ^ Obituary in the New York Times
personal data
SURNAME Jervis, George A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jervis, George Amede (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American medic
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucera , Italy
DATE OF DEATH June 5, 1986
Place of death Stony Point , New York , USA