Goldberger, Joseph

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

[br]

b. 16 July 1874 Giralt, Hungary

d. 17 January 1929 Washington, DC, USA

[br]

American physician, virologist and epidemiologist, pioneer of egg viral culture and of the social approach to the aetiology of disease.

[br]

Of immigrant stock, Goldberger entered the College of New York in 1890 as an engineering student. In 1892 he transferred to medicine, and in 1895 he qualified at Bellevue Hospital. Following an internship and unhappy experience of private medical practice in Pennsylvania, he qualified for the US Public Health Service in 1899, remaining there until his death.

By 1910 he had been involved in field investigations of yellow fever, dengue and typhus. It was during this time that, with J.F.Anderson, he developed the egg culture techniques which enabled the demonstration of the filter-passing measles virus. The work with which he was most identified, however, was in connection with pellagra, at that time thought to be of microbial or protozoal origin. Using epidemiological techniques, he was able to demonstrate that it was in fact a nutritional deficiency disease, inducing the disease in prison volunteers on an abundant but protein-deficient diet.

[br]

Bibliography

1910, with J.Anderson, Experimental Measles in the Monkey, Public Health Report RG90, US Public Health Service, National Archives.

Further Reading

R.P.Parsons, 1943, Trail to Light. A Biography of Joseph Goldberger, New York.

MG