4HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE A History of the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1955-2001 Isabelle Rapin Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology Department of Pediatrics Rose F. Kennedy Center for Research in Mental Retardation and Human Development Albert Einstein College of Medicine Bronx, New York 10461 he most salient feature of the early Neurology Department was that, within less than five years, it T had attained national and international status. What made it so? Its rocket ascent can be attributed to two interlocking features. The first was that when the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) was conceived, anti-Semitism in academe was still alive and thriving. As a result, the infant College was able to recruit a stellar faculty attracted by its charter with a clear statement of non-discrimination. The same charter also may have influenced Albert Einstein to lend his name to this non-sectarian branch of a Jewish university. The second feature was the extraordinary coup of the Professor and Chairman of Medicine, Irving London, himself a distinguished clinician/investigator, when he re- cruited Saul R. Korey to chair the Division of Neurology in Medicine. This was done with the understanding that neurology would become an independent department FIGURE 1 Saul R. Korey, founder and first Chair of the Albert Einstein when it had accrued sufficeint faculty and a residency College of Medicine Department of Neurology (1955-1963). program. Yeshiva President Belkin granted departmental status in July 1961. trained generations of neurology residents. Labe Scheinberg was acting Chair and then Co-chair of the Department from 1963 to 1970 as well as Dean of the SAUL R. KOREY AND THE EARLY DAYS Medical School from 1970 to 1972. Robert Katzman, OF THE DEPARTMENT (Figute 2a) who came in 1957, first investigated elec- trolytes and water in the brain and then worked on Saul R. Korey (Figure 1) was 37 years old when in 1955 he Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. He also joined Saul Korey and left Case Western Reserve to come to the Bronx. Trained Kunihiko Suzuki in an early study of the neurochemistry in neurology and neurochemistry, his vision was that of the Alzheimer brain, using the same biopsy material neurologists/scientists should attempt to answer in the that let to the pioneering study of the ultrastructure of laboratory questions posed by patients, without sacrifice Alzheimer disease by Robert D. Terry, a neuropathologist of humane and high quality clinical care. He sought out recruited in 1959. At that time, Alzheimer’s disease was basic scientists like the organic chemists William Norton considered to be presenile and thus rare, and dementia (1957) and Robert Ledeen (1962) as well as the was thought to be an uninteresting though unfortunate biochemists Stanley Samuels (1960) and Amadeo aspect of normal aging. I was recruited in 1958, because I D’Adamo (1963) to apply their knowledge of chemistry had training in child neurology, at the time a new aspect to the brain and human diseases. Also included in this of neurology. Lawrence Taft, who joined the Department eclectic group was Elliott Robbins (1960), who worked on of Pediatrics in 1955, shared with me the running of child mechanisms of mitosis, and Alan Finkelstein (1963), a neurology service at Jacobi Hospital until 1973, when he membrane physiologist and a current AECOM professor. left to become Chair of Pediatrics at Robert Wood As for the clinical faculty, Saul Korey did not ask us Johnson Medical School. He was and is an expert in the whether we would do research, he asked what research care of handicapped children and was the founder of we intended to do. For example, Labe Scheinberg, what became the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation (Figure 2b), who joined him in 1956, investigated Clinic (CERC). Saul Korey had invited Louis Costa, a quiet immunological aspects of brain tumors and, later, young neuropsychologist, starting a distinguished career, multiple sclerosis. Labe Scheinberg was Saul Korey’s to carry out the behavioral studies he considered just as right-hand clinical partner and faculty recruiter. Together crucial to neurologic research as bench investigations. with Louis Berlin, who died prematurely, and others, he Influenced in part by Lou Costa, I started career-long clin- 68 Einstein Quart. J. Biol. Med. (2002) 19:68-78. 4HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE A History of the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1955-2001 ical research on developmental disorders of communica- brain/behavior relationships in living individuals. He tion, which brought me to a school for the deaf and to collaborated with Herbert Schimmel, a mathematician the study of autism and language disorders. Elliot who had worked at the United Nations and as a senato- Weitzman came in 1961, a fourth recruit from the resi- rial aide in Washington, whom Bob Katzman recruited to dency at the Neurological Institute of Columbia work on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) transport problems. Presbyterian Medical Center. He worked on neonatal Herb Schimmel also helped me in my investigations of electrophysiology and later on the relatively new field of cortical auditory evoked potentials as a physicologic test sleep disorders and circadian rhythms. He died prema- of hearing. This was the first such laboratory in the New turely in 1983. Another early key figure was Molly Cox York area and brought to AECOM a large cohort of deaf (Figure 3), sister of the future Solicitor General Archibald and multiply handicapped infants, in particular those Cox, whom Labe Scheinberg brought from the electroen- infected in utero with rubella during the 1964 epidemic. cephalography (EEG) department of the Neurological An indirect consequence of this work on audition was Institute to organize a similar one at Jacobi Hospital. the recruitment of Robert J. Ruben in 1968, with a strong Although not a physician, she taught residents how to research background in otology, to start what became read EEGs for 28 years. Some residents, like Jerome (Pete) one of the foremost academic ear, nose, and throat (ENT) Engel and Solomon (Nico) Moshé, became international Departments in the country. Over the years, Herbert leaders in epilepsy and electrophysiology. Molly Cox Vaughan, who was Director of the Rose F. Kennedy served as the hub, mother confessor, and confidante of Institute for Research in Mental Retardation and Human the entire Department until her retirement in 1985. Development from 1982 to 1993, trained a series of young investigators in the ever more sophisticated field Saul Korey’s first resident was Herbert G. Vaughan, Jr. He of event-related potentials. Another early resident was had a strong undergraduate background in physics from Denis Giblin (Figure 3) from McGill University, who Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and had stayed to educate hundreds of AECOM residents in clin- come under the influence of Donald Hebb, the distin- ical neurology until his death in 1999. Yet, another was guished neuropsychologist of cortical function at McGill Herman Buschke, also a lifelong member of the University. Herb Vaughan later returned to MIT for a Department, whose pioneering studies of memory have postdoctoral fellowship with Lukas Teuber, another phys- profoundly influenced current thinking about aging and iological/cognitive psychologist who launched neuropsy- dementia. Still another resident was Herbert Schaumburg, chologic investigation of patients with focal brain (Figure 2c) our current Chairman of Neurology, who lesions. He teamed with Lou Costa and later Steven championed the admission to AECOM of students with Mattis in neuropsychologic investigations of sensori- blindness, quadriplegia, and other severe handicaps. motor processing and language. As soon as the tech- Most of whom, like himself, went on to distinguish nology was developed, Bob Katzman persuaded Saul themselves despite their handcap. Korey to purchase a Computer of Average Transients (memory 4 kilobytes!) for EEG signal averaging. Herb A colorful early member of the Department, and surely Vaughan took it over on his return from MIT to study by now its most widely known, was Oliver W. Sacks who FIGURE 2 Later Chairmen: a. Robert Katzman (1964-1984); b. Labe Scheinberg (acting co-Chair, 1963-72; AECOM Dean, 1970-1972); c. Herbert Schaumburg (1985-present) The Einstein Quarterly Journal of Biology and Medicine 69 4HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE A History of the Saul R. Korey Department of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1955-2001 arrived in 1965. He was attracted by the interdisciplinary Saul Korey organized the first neurobiologic Neurology vision of Saul Korey and by Bob Terry’s research. After he Department in the country. Extraordinarily creative in his found out that bench research was not for him, he vision of science, he radiated enthusiasm and optimism, moved to Beth Abraham Hospital where his weekly case and he expected excellence as well as cross-departmental conferences were the highlight of medical students’ interdisciplinary collaboration from all members of the neurology rotations. His work in the Montefiore Department. He convinced the National Institute of Headache Clinic provided the data for his first book, Mental Health of the need for an interdisciplinary Migraine. When l-DOPA became available in 1967, he training program in the behavioral sciences. In its offered it to the profoundly affected post-encephalitic heyday, which lasted until the early 1970s, the interdisci- patients who had spent their lives in Beth Abraham plinary (ID) grant at AECOM supported over two-dozen Hospital since the post-World War I influenza pandemic. postdoctoral fellows in neuroscience, a few graduate His startling observations of very rapid on-off effects, students, allocated equal monies for faculty support and not seen in garden variety Parkinsonian patients but fellow stipends, and supported major symposia and semi- meticulously described in his 1973 book, Awakenings, nars.