CLARE MCLEAN/UW MEDICINEArno Motulsky, a pioneer of medical genetics at the University of Washington, died earlier this month (January 17) surrounded by his children. He was 94.
Among his many contributions to science, Motulsky is credited with founding the field of pharmacogenetics—the study of genetic influences on drug response. “The relationship between heredity and the response to drug therapy—nobody was thinking about that until he started, 60 years ago,” Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, tells The New York Times. “He anticipated it decades before science made it possible to get the answers that he dreamed of.”
Born into a Jewish family in the summer of 1923 in East Prussia, Motulsky was forced to flee an increasingly hostile Nazi rule at the age of 16. After a boat carrying him and other Jewish refugees was refused entry at both Cuba and the U.S., he returned to Europe, where he ...
