Wolf William Zülzer

Wolf William Zülzer (born  May 24, 1909 in Berlin , †  March 20, 1987 in Washington, DC ) was a German - American hematologist and pediatrician . He made important contributions to the study of blood diseases in children and is considered a co-discoverer of megaloblastic anemia in childhood. After his emigration to the USA , the spelling without umlaut as Wolf William Zuelzer was also used for his name, especially in English-speaking countries .

Life

Wolf William Zülzer was born in Berlin in 1909 as the son of the doctor Georg Ludwig Zülzer and studied French literature from 1927 to 1928 at the Sorbonne in Paris and then from 1929 to 1930 philosophy and Romance philology at the University of Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers and Ernst Robert Curtius . In 1930 he switched to medical school , which he completed at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin before he was forced to drop out of Berlin in 1933 due to his Jewish descent . He completed his doctorate at the German University in Prague in 1935 and then immigrated to the United States , like his father had done a year earlier .

After an internship in pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and a year unpaid post in pathology at Boston Children's Hospital, he went to Detroit in 1941 and later to Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago , where he continued his education. In 1945, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology and Pediatrics and two years later Professor of Pediatric Research at Wayne State University . From 1955 to 1975 he was director of the Child Research Center of Michigan and medical director of the Michigan Community Blood Center, then from 1976 to 1979 he headed the blood disorders division of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland .

Wolf William Zülzer was married twice and had two daughters with his first wife. He died of leukemia in Washington, DC in 1987 .

Act

Wolf William Zülzer's research focused on disorders of the formation and function of the blood pigment hemoglobin , especially in thalassemia and sickle cell anemia , as well as hemolysis in rhesus incompatibility and acute leukemia in children. Various hematological clinical pictures are named after him, such as the Jirásek-Zuelzer-Wilson syndrome , the Zuelzer-Kaplan syndrome and the Zuelzer-Ogden syndrome .

In addition to his medical and scientific work, he was also active as a writer and published, among other things, a book on the Watergate affair and a biographical treatise on the German doctor Georg Friedrich Nicolai .

Awards

Wolf William Zülzer received the Mead Johnson Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1949 for his discovery of megaloblastic anemia in childhood and the John Howland Award in 1985 . He was also awarded the Emily Cooley Memorial Award in 1965 and the Morten Grove-Rasmussen Memorial Award from the Association of American Blood Banks in 1976.

Works (selection)

• Self-destruction of democracy? An American lesson. Piper, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-492-02121-2 .
• The Nicolai case. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-7973-0384-X .
• No future as “non-Aryans” in the Third Reich. Memories of an emigrant. In: Walter H. Pehle (Ed.): Der Judenpogrom 1938. From the “Reichskristallnacht” to genocide. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1988, ISBN 3-596-24386-6 , pp. 146-159.

literature

• Hans-Rudolf Wiedemann: The Pioneers Of Pediatric Medicine: Wolf W. Zuelzer (1909−1987). In: European Journal of Pediatrics. 149/1990. Springer-Verlag, p. 451, ISSN  0340-6199

Web links

• Whonamedit.com - Biographical Dictionary of Medical Eponyms: Wolf William Zuelzer (English)