Solomon Aaron Berson

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Solomon "Sol" Aaron Berson (born April 22, 1918 in New York , † April 11, 1972 Atlantic City , New Jersey ) was an American pioneer of nuclear medicine .

Together with the later Nobel Prize winner Rosalyn Yalow , he developed the radioimmunoassay method . He also did important research on the use of radioisotopes as indicators or tracers in medicine .

Berson was the son of a Russian emigrant who owned a fur dye factory. He had two siblings. After graduating from college, he decided to study medicine in 1934, but was initially rejected by all universities. He bridged the waiting time with chemical and anatomical studies at New York University . In 1941 he was finally accepted at NY University Medical School , where he received his medical doctorate in 1945. In 1942 he married Miriam Gitteson. After completing his training, he completed his military service until 1948, after which he worked at the Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital . In 1950 he became assistant to the chief nuclear medicine specialist Rosalyn Yalow, with whom he worked until his death in 1972. In 1954 he became head of the outsourced Radioisotope Service in order to introduce the then newly developed radioiodine therapy .

Yalow and Berson published numerous fundamental works on radioiodine therapy and other medical applications of radionuclides (see nuclear medicine ). In 1953 they succeeded in elucidating the metabolism of serum albumin by labeling with radioactive iodine. In 1956 they studied the antibody binding of insulin in diabetics and came to the discovery that their radioactive labeling technology could also reliably measure extremely low concentrations of substances in the blood. They showed that many older diabetes patients did not have too low but, on the contrary, abnormally high insulin concentrations in their blood (known today as type II diabetes ). In 1959 they published their measurement method in its final form. This was the hour of birth of the radioimmunoassays that are still used today. Yalow and Berson applied them to numerous open questions in endocrinology over the next few decades . They did not patent the process.

In 1968 Berson became a full professor and dean of the Faculty of Medicine ( Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of NY ). Like his colleague, he has received numerous scientific recognitions and awards, including the Banting Medal of the American Diabetes Association (1965), a Gairdner Foundation International Award (1971) and the Fred Conrad Koch Award (1972). In 1972 Berson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . He died in 1972 during a convention in Atlantic City. The Nobel Prize was awarded to Rosalyn Yalow in 1977, five years after Berson's death.

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  • JE Rall: Solomon A. Berson . In: Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences 1990; 59: 54-71. ISBN 0-309-04198-8 . On-line