UCSFMelvin Grumbach, a researcher credited with pioneering the field of pediatric endocrinology, passed away on October 4. He was 90 years old.
Grumbach, who spent most of his career at the University of California, San Francisco, identified human hormones important for growth and puberty and also described the underlying causes of many endocrine disorders, including aromatase deficiency.
“No single individual trained as many leaders or had a broader impact on pediatric endocrinology,” wrote Walter Miller, Grumbach’s colleague at UCSF, in a memorial published in Endocrinology this month. “One cannot write the history of endocrinology or of UCSF without writing of Mel.”
Grumbach trained as a physician at Columbia University and later established the school’s first pediatric endocrine department in 1955. In 1966, he moved to UCSF, along with his longtime collaborator Selna Kaplan. “They developed a robust population of patients with all manner of endocrine disorders and ...
