Samuel R. Natelson Collection

Samuel R. Natelson was an American clinical chemist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 28, 1909, to a Jewish family. He attended City College of New York and received his B.S. in 1928. Upon receiving his Ph.D. from New York University in 1931, he did a variety of consulting work while also teaching at Girls Commercial High School in Brooklyn, New York. His consultation work included working with several pediatricians at the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn on determining the causes of newborn infant mortality rates. This marked his introduction to clinical chemistry, and he became a founding member of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, known as the AACC.

In 1949, Natelson was recruited to set up a Pediatric Research Laboratory at the Rockford Memorial Hospital in Rockford, Illinois. Natelson’s title was Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry. The work Natelson and his colleagues did at Rockford resulted in The Immature Infant published in 1953, which was ill received by his contemporaries in neonatology. Only later would the findings put forth in The Immature Infant be accepted and Natelson and his colleagues vindicated. In the 1960s, Natelson served as a consultant to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, helping analyze the effects of weightlessness on astronauts’ blood. Natelson was later director of laboratories at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

Upon his retirement in 1979, Natelson moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where he taught as Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tennessee School of Veterinary Medicine. He died in Houston, Texas on March 31, 2001 and, before his death, he was the last surviving founding member of the AACC.

Sources

Samuel R. Natelson Collection, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Oral History Interview with Samuel R. Natelson, Science History Institute Oral Histories, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pesce, Amadeo J. Samuel Natelson: Genius, Heretic, Savior. 2003