Isidore S. Edelman
July 23, 1920 - November 21, 2004
Columbia Scientist, Led Genome Center. By Jeremy Pearce
Dr. Isidore S. Edelman, a versatile scientist and administrator who
directed and helped found the Columbia Genome Center at Columbia
University, died on Nov. 21 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. He
was 84.
The cause was gastrointestinal cancer, said a son, Dr. Arthur Edelman
of East Amherst, N.Y.
In 1978, Dr. Isidore Edelman joined Columbia's faculty as chairman of
the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics. In 1991, he was
named co-director of Columbia's Human Genome Program, then was director of
the genome center from 1995 to 2000. He continued his work there until
this year.
Dr. Richard Axel, a university colleague who shared this year's Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Dr. Linda B. Buck, said Dr. Edelman
brought "a new vision" to the position with his recognition of "the
enormous power of the new genetics."
Early in his career, as a researcher in physiology at Harvard, Dr.
Edelman studied the body's distribution of essential salts and minerals,
known as electrolytes, which are carried in blood and body fluids, and
used radioactive isotopes to trace their paths through the bloodstream and
body.
Later laboratory work in the 1960's at the University of California,
San Francisco, involved aldosterone and that hormone's effect on the
absorption of salt in the kidney. In the early 1970's, he investigated
thyroid hormone function and its role in the production of body heat.
Isidore Samuel Edelman was born in Brooklyn. He received his
undergraduate and medical degrees from Indiana University and conducted
his early research at Harvard Medical School.
In addition to his son Arthur, he is survived by his second wife, Dr.
Roslyn Ross of Manhattan; another son, Joseph of Manhattan; two daughters,
Susan Bleckner of Los Angeles and Ann Korchin of Albany, Calif., all from
his first marriage; and five grandchildren.
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