Martin S. Hirsch

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Martin Stanley Hirsch (born April 16, 1939 in Cortland (New York) ) is an American doctor and virologist who deals with viral diseases and specifically with HIV and its therapy.

Hirsch's father was a gynecologist in Germany, but was forced to emigrate as a Jew by the National Socialists in 1937. Hirsch studied at Hamilton College (New York) with a bachelor's degree in 1960 and at Johns Hopkins University , where he received his doctorate in medicine (MD) in 1964. He completed his training as a specialist in internal medicine at the clinics of the University of Chicago (residency 1965/66) and at the CDC in Atlanta. He was a Fellow at the National Institute of Medical Research in London and the Fellow in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH, 1969 to 1971). Hirsch became assistant professor in 1971 and professor of medicine in 1988 at Harvard Medical School , where he became professor of immunology and infectious diseases in 1996. From 1986 to 2003 he was director of the Harvard Collaborative AIDS Treatment Evaluation Unit and directed the clinical testing at Harvard for AIDS therapies. He is also a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and from 1981 headed the Aids programs at the MGH.

He is one of the pioneers of combination therapy against AIDS, both in laboratory studies and in clinical tests. Before that, in the 1970s, he was a pioneer in chemotherapy drugs against viruses, at that time mainly herpes simplex viruses , which cause meningitis, for example. He led clinical trials to combat them with idoxuridine . At that time he founded the Boston Interhospital Virus Study Group with Michael Oxman. Also in the 1970s he directed studies on the pathogenesis and therapy of cytomegalovirus infections.

In AIDS research in the early 1980s, he showed that HIV-1 could be detected in male and female sex secretions, which supported sexual transmission, and they also detected the pathogen in the nervous system (brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, retina, etc.).

In 2008 he received the Maxwell Finland Award and in 2012 the Alexander Fleming Award . In 2011 he received the International Antiviral Society's Lifetime Achievement Award for leadership in HIV research.

He was a member of the US Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Clinical Practices for the Treatment of HIV Infection.

He has served on the editorial boards of AIDS , the New England Journal of Medicine , Clinical Infectious Diseases, and the Journal of Infectious Diseases , which he was editor of since 2003. Hirsch is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

In 1964 he married Corinne Becker, with whom he has two children.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ IAS Award
personal data
SURNAME Hirsch, Martin S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hirsch, Martin Stanley (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American medical doctor and virologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Cortland (New York)