Dr. Michael Somogyi Collection

Dr. Michael Somogyi was a Hungarian-American clinical chemist. Somogyi was in born in Zsámánd, Austria-Hungary (now part of Heiligenbrun, Austria) in 1883. At the age of 16, he enrolled in the University of Budapest and received a degree in Chemical Engineering. After spending some time at the University of Budapest as a graduate assistant in biochemistry, he immigrated to the United States. From 1906 to 1908 he was an assistant in biochemistry at Cornell University.

Somogyi returned to Hungary in 1908 where he became head of the Municipal Laboratory at Budapest. In 1914, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Budapest after writing his dissertation on catalytic hydrogenation. After World War I, the politically unstable situation in his homeland led him to return to the United States. In 1922, he took a job as an instructor in biochemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

While at Washington University, Somogyi worked with future Nobel prize recipient Edward Adelbert Doisy Sr. and Philip A. Shaffer to develop a new method for the preparation of insulin to make it a viable treatment for diabetes. The method they developed is still in use today for the commercial production of insulin. This early work with insulin helped foster Dr. Somogyi’s life-long interest in the treatment and cure of diabetes.

Somogyi was the first biochemist appointed to the staff of the newly opened Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri and he remained there as the director of their clinical laboratory until his retirement. During his tenure at the Jewish Hospital, Dr. Somogyi publicly stated that many diabetic patients were receiving larger than necessary quantities of insulin and were suffering as a result. He also advocated for alternative treatments to diabetes, such as adjusted diet and weight loss. Physicians around the world read Dr. Somogyi’s research and reached out to him for advisement on how to best treat patients with diabetes. Dr. Somogyi retired from the Jewish Hospital in 1957 and suffered a serious stroke in 1969. This curtailed the many teaching and writing activities Dr. Somogyi had planned for his retirement years. In 1971 Dr. Michael Somogyi died in St. Louis, Missouri at age 88.

Sources

Dr. Michael Somogyi Collection, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Harvey Walker, “Michael Somogyi, Ph.D. 1883-1971”, Clinical Chemistry, Volume 17, Issue 11, 1 November 1971, Page 1138, https://doi.org/10.1093/clinchem/17.11.1138