Kurt Hirschhorn Receives Lifetime Achievement Award In Genetics From March of Dimes

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., MARCH 24, 2006 – Kurt Hirschhorn, M.D., a world-renowned geneticist, pediatrician, and educator who has had a 40-year association with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, today received the 2006 March of Dimes/Colonel Harland Sanders Award for lifetime achievement in the field of genetic sciences.

The award was presented to Dr. Hirschhorn at the Annual Clinical Genetics Meeting of the American College of Medical Genetics in San Diego, California.  Michael Katz, M.D., Senior Vice President for Research and Global Programs of the March of Dimes, presided over the ceremony.

Dr. Hirschhorn has served for many years as a scientific advisor to the March of Dimes.

Dr. Hirschhorn's first faculty appointment was at New York University School of Medicine in 1958, where he started a genetics clinic and a course for medical students, “both the acts of a bold and determined man, taken at a time when genetics in the general medical opinion had much to do with fruit flies and nothing to do with people,” said Barton Childs, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University Hospital, a previous recipient of the award.

Early in his career, Dr. Hirschhorn established himself by his discovery (independently of Dr. Ulrich Wolf) of the genetic error on chromosome 4 responsible for a rare birth defect characterized by severe growth retardation, mental deficiency, facial and heart defects, and other malformations.  This disorder was subsequently named Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome.

In 1966, Dr. Hirschhorn joined Mount Sinai, where he established a new medical genetics program patterned on his efforts at NYU.   In 1977, he was named Herbert H. Lehman Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics and Pediatrician-in-Chief at The Mount Sinai Hospital.  He stepped down from these positions in 1995 and returned to research as Professor of Pediatrics, Human Genetics, and Medicine.

Among his many other achievements, Dr. Hirschhorn was a co-founder in 1969 of the first program in genetic counseling in the United States at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.  It remains the largest program of its kind in the country and has trained half of the nation's genetic counselors.  He also was a founding member of The Hastings Center for Biomedical Ethics in Garrison, N.Y. 

Dr. Hirschhorn has been a long-time leader of the American Society of Human Genetics, where he served a term as its president and as a member of the editorial boards of The American Journal of Human Genetics and The American Journals of Medical Genetics.  In addition, he was the editor, with Harry Harris, of the well-known Advances in Human Genetics from 1970 to 1995.  He has published more than 400 articles and book chapters.

“It is an honor to receive this award,'' Dr. Hirschhorn says.  “To know that previous winners have included our leading genetic scientists is most gratifying.''

Dr. Hirschhorn was born in 1926 in Vienna, Austria.  He received his early public school education there and then attended high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  After three years in the Army, he received his bachelor's degree cum laude in 1950 from New York University and his medical degree in 1954 from NYU.  He served his residency in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital, New York City, and remained there as a fellow in metabolic diseases.  He then had a fellowship in human genetics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.  He was awarded a master's degree in internal medicine and genetics in 1958, when he became Assistant Professor at NYU.

Established in 1986, the March of Dimes/Colonel Harland Sanders Award is given annually to an individual whose lifetime body of research and education had made a significant contribution to the genetic sciences.