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Lee L. Bernardis
September 18, 1926 - September 5, 2005
 Lee
Bernardis was born in Graz Austria on September 18, 1926. He attended the
University of Graz, Austria and was mentored by Karl von Frisch, who later
won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In 1949, Lee earned his first Ph.D., this
one in Zoology. During this time the energetic young Bernardis also became
a body builder. At the same time Lee pursued an interest in boxing. In 1950
he won the Austrian Turn and Sportunion Light Middleweight Boxing
Championhip. All the while he continued a life-long passion of being a
glider pilot.
In 1951 Lee immigrated to Canada and worked various
jobs before returning to the academic world. In 1961 he earned a second
Ph.D., this time in Physiology, under the direction of the noted scientist
James A.F. Stevenson at Western Ontario. His research included studies of
energy metabolism, neuroendocrinology, experimental obesity and food intake
mechanisms. During this time he won the Central Ontario Light Heavyweight
Boxing Championship; a feat his son later remarked was most interesting for
a man with one Ph.D. and working on a second. But that was Lee.
Lee soon joined the faculty at SUNY at Buffalo and in
1963 published a seminal paper describing food intake and metabolic effects
of weanling rats given small ventromedial hypothalamic lesions (VMNL). Over
the next 40 years this paper was followed by several others from Lee’s
laboratory that showed body weight could be controlled as much by metabolism
as by food intake. In 1965 Lee reported that rats with VMNL showed growth
retardation and reduced pituitary acidophils. Later, with Larry Frohman,
the lesions were shown to decrease growth hormone secretion, whereas they
importantly also increased the secretion insulin. In 1970 Lee published
another seminal finding when he reported that destruction of the dorsomedial
hypothalamic nucleus (DMN) produced a rat that ate and drank less than the
controls and was smaller than normal, but had normal body composition, that
is, its percentage of body fat and protein were the same as controls.
Starting with a Post-doctoral Fellowship with Lee as
mentor, he and I would go on to study this model for the next thirty years.
Together, we published dozens of papers on how the DMN influenced feeding
behavior and body weight regulation. Other collaborative work included how
hindbrain and gut hormones influenced feeding behavior and work on how the
liver was involved (or not involved) in the control of feeding.
Lee published over 195 scientific papers and 168
abstracts, several book chapters and a number of review articles. He had a
passion for writing review articles. At the time of his death Lee was
working on a massive 2,500 reference article covering the role of the medial
hypothalamus on feeding behavior and metabolism.
Only two days before he died on September 6, 2005 Lee
was out flying, doing what he loved most. His wife Barbara and son Glenn
are doing as well as can be expected. We have lost a unique scientist and
personality; and to those who knew him, we have lost a devoted friend.
Larry L. Bellinger
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