Daniel C. Tosteson

Daniel Charles Tosteson (born February 5, 1925 in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , † May 27, 2009 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American physician and physiologist . From 1977 to 1997 he served as dean of Harvard Medical School , where he implemented a number of administrative changes. As a physiologist, he primarily researched transport processes on cell membranes .

Career

Daniel C. Tosteson was born in Milwaukee and grew up in nearby Wauwatosa . He studied at Harvard University , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1944 and his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1949 . He then worked briefly at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City , before a seven-year post-doc at the Brookhaven National Laboratory , the National Heart Institute, and between 1955 and 1957 at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge spent. On his return to the United States, he was an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis before moving to Duke University in 1961 , where he was appointed to his first full professorship and took over the management of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology . After 14 years in North Carolina , Tosteson followed the call of the University of Chicago in 1975 , where he was appointed Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine . He only held this position for two years, however, since he returned to his alma mater in 1977 and from then on was dean of the medical faculty and professor of physiology at Harvard.

As a result, Tosteson led the fortunes of Harvard Medical School for 20 years, during which he implemented a number of changes to the curriculum and increased the university's grants by almost nine times. In addition, several departments of the faculty were newly established or modernized under his aegis. In 1997 he retired .

Daniel C. Tosteson had been married to Magdalena T. Tosteson (nee Tieffenberg) since 1969, who worked as a scientist in his department at Harvard. He had six children with her. He died in Boston on May 27, 2009 at the age of 72.

Scientific focus

Tosteson's main focus was on the physiology of cell membranes . He wrote several monographs on transport processes on biomembranes, in particular on the transport of ions and how they can be influenced by toxins . The processes in red blood cells were often at the center of his research . Later he dealt with the didactics of medical studies and published specialist articles on his changes in this regard at Harvard.

Honors

Tosteson was a member of numerous professional and honorary societies, including the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Biophysical Society, and as a foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . In 1979 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as president from 1997 to 2000, as well as the American Physiological Society in 1973/74. He also received honorary doctorates from the University of Copenhagen (1979), the University of Liège (1983), the Medical College of Wisconsin (1984), New York University (1992), Johns Hopkins University (1993), Duke University (1996 ), Emory University (1996), Université catholique de Louvain (1996), Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (2002) and Harvard University itself.

Web links

• Obituary on the website of the American Physiological Society
• Obituary in the Harvard Gazette

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bruce Weber: Daniel C. Tosteson, Longtime Dean Who Reshaped Harvard Medical School, Dies at 84.nytimes.com , June 3, 2009, accessed on May 6, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter T. (PDF; 432 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved May 6, 2018 .