680
THE ENDOCRINE
SOCIETY
JCE & M * 1992 Vo175.No2
Citation
for the Robert H. Williams Distinguished Service Award to Claude J. Migeon
The Robert H. Williams Distinguished Service Award honors a member of The Endocrine Society who, in the image of Dr. Williams, has served the field of endocrinology and has nutured generations of endocrinological scholars. The 1992 recipient is Claude J. Migeon, M.D. Claude was born in Lievin (Pas-De-Calais) France and received his baccalaureate degree from Lycee de Reimsand his medical degree from the University of Paris. The times were uneasy-it was World War II in occupied France. Occasionally Claude can be persuaded to share with fellows and colleagueshis epic adventures as a young student working with the French resistance.And he will alsorelate medical adventures describing how, along with a nun, an elderly physician, and meager medical equipment and medication, he cared for a displaced Ukranian woman in need of a Cesarean section. This unusual trio also provided medical care for badly wounded soldiers, including four Americans from Patton’s army. An early turning point in his career came in 1946, when, confronted with a ward full of children with tuberculous meningitis for whom he could provide no meaningful treatment, he vividly recognized the importance of research to the progressof medicine. Having completed his pediatric training at the Hopital des Enfants Malades in Paris and postdoctoral training in biochemistry at the University of Paris, young Claude Migeon, speaking virtually no English, ventured forth to Baltimore and The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions to study with the Father of Pediatric Endocrinology, Lawson Wilkins. Lawson’s influence on Claude was profound and inspirationalas it was on every one of Wilkins’ fellows, Claude developed a life-long interest in steroid metabolism. To further expand his horizons and his training, he spent three years as a research instructor in biochemistry with Leo Samuels at the University of Utah. This was a heady atmosphere for the young French physician. The group, which included Don Nelson, Chris Eik Ness, Gene Bliss,Avery Sandberg, and others, was involved in the study
of the physiology of cortisol secretion and its relationship to stress. It was in Salt Lake City that Claude reported the isolation of the first androgen from human blood-dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate. In 1955, Claude made a decision that profoundly influenced the course of his career. When Wilkins invited him to return to Hopkins, he accepted with alacrity. Thirty-seven years later he is still there carrying on the remarkable tradition of pediatric endocrinological training that has become one of the hallmarks of this great institution. There are many tales about Claude’s elopement with Barbara Ruben, a Harriet Lane pediatric resident. The most accurate, of course, comes from Barbara and Claude themselves. Accompanied by Bill and Marty Cleveland and by the inimitable Lawson Wilkins, they went off to Arlington, VA. Wilkins provided the joie de vivre as well as the wines, champagnes,and liquors. Wilkins loved this senseof participation in his fellows’ lives, a wonderful trait that Barbara and Claude have perpetuated in their relationships with succeedinggenerations of endocrine fellows. In 1961, Wilkins retired. From then until 1973, Claude shared responsibility for the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology with Dr. Robert M. Blizzard. When Blizzard left Hopkins to becomechairman of the department of pediatrics at Charlottesville, Claude took over the leadership of the Hopkins division. Lawson Wilkins was a great clinician and dearly enjoyed teaching his young fellows who, in those days, were known as “the boys,” even though the group included a few girls. Migeon carried on the tradition, obtaining an NIH training grant in 1961 which provided stipends for six fellows. It was the threat by the Nixon administration in 1974 to eliminate NIH training grants that drove Claude into public affairs. Helping to galvanize the scientific community to defend the
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/75/2/680/2649550 by Rudolph Matas Medical Library user on 02 February 2019
in early childhood education, her teaching experience in a Methodist nursery school in East Harlem, and her career as a mother of two daughters, Carolyn and Rita, prepared her for that job. When Nettie retired as Executive Director in 1988, Nick Christy, then Secretary-Treasurer, published a tribute in the Newsletter of The Endocrine Society acknowledging how Nettie had managed to cope with the long debilitating illness and then death of her husband Fred and with other personal crises. He wrote, “None of these impaired her function or interfered in the slightest with the work of the society. Through them all she maintained her good humor. She unfailingly had time, made time, to help the officers, councilors and members of the society, a society which she had taken on not as a job but a vocation. Nettie was quite literally on duty 24 hr a day. Indeed she became the mother of us all.”
THE
ENDOCRINE
681
number of fellows trained? By the number of scientific reports? By the number of patients cared for? Obviously, there are no simple answers. Rather, the answer lies in the marvelous ability to combine all three and to include compassion and sensitivity for one’s colleagues and patients along the way. Claude Migeon embodies these qualities along with those of the great researcher, teacher, and physician. He is an international scholar in the finest sense of the word, having attracted these and many other young endocrinologists from the world over to study with him at Hopkins. He is truly deserving of the Williams Award. Citation for the Rhbne-Poulene Rorer Pharmaceutical Clinical Investigator Award of The Endocrine Society to Samuel S. C. Yen Samuel S. C. Yen is currently a Professor of Reproductive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where for at least the last 20 yr he has added to our knowledge of the neuroendocrine regulation of the reproductive system, the endocrinology of the menstrual cycle, and the effects of reproductive hormones on metabolism. He has offered provocative theories on the genesisand/or treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome, premenstrual tension, menopause, hypothalamic causesof amenorrhea, pseudocyesis,and anorexia nervosa. He has studied feedback mechanismsas they relate to normal function and disease. Sam was born in Beijing, China, in 1927 and grew up during the Japaneseoccupation of China and the hostilities of World War II. He flew with the Flying Tigers as a teenager. His father was a physician who remained in China, but Sam entered the Medical School of the University of Hong Kong from which he graduated in 1954 followed by an internship in medicine at Queen Mary Hospital. He met Nicholson Eastman, Professor of Obstetrics from Johns Hopkins at this time in Hong Kong and obtained a coveted appointment to
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/75/2/680/2649550 by Rudolph Matas Medical Library user on 02 February 2019
training grant programs, Claude becamea zealot on this issue and so many other public policy issuesaffecting academic science.In recognition of his many contributions in this area, he received the Ayerst Award from The Endocrine society in 1982. During his 40-yr career, Claude Migeon has contributed to the instruction of 65 American fellows and 37 fellows from abroad. Among them, 10 have been or are chairmen of pediatric departments, 3 are assistant or associatedeans of medical schools,and 5 are associatedwith major pharmaceutical companies. Almost all the others are directors of pediatric endocrine clinics and training programs in the United States, Europe, or South America. Thus, Claude’s influence on successivegenerations of pediatric endocrinologists has been profound and certainly worthy of the Williams Award. Claude’s contributions to the body of knowledge of steroid metabolism are legend. Since 1950 he has authored 350 scientific papers and numerous book chapters. Early in his careerhe studied the transplacental passageof steroids.Later, the establishment of the double isotope derivative methods allowed him to extend his studies to plasma androgens in man. Collaborating on these projects were Jean Bertrand, Carl Gemzell, Inese Beitins, Marco Rivarola, JoseSaez, Bernadette Loras, Maguelone Forest, and Roland Tremblay. In the sixties, Claude established the norms of adrenal function in infancy and childhood. Studies of cortisol secretion were carried out with Fritz Kenny, Paul Malvaux, Orville Green, Wellington Hung, and others. In 1970, with Francis Bayard, Inese Beitins, and Ave Kowarski, he published the first description of an RIA method for plasma and urinary aldosterone. Additional aldosterone studies with Bob Blizzard, Grant Liddle, Ave Kowarski, and Virginia Weldon showed that aldosterone secretion was increased in nonsalt-losing congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Additionally, his studiesshowed that although cortisol secretion is related to body size during growth and development, aldosterone secretion is constant from infancy to adulthood. With the help of Perrin White and in collaboration with Pat Donohoue, Neil Van Dop, Nick Jospe, and Romolo Sandrini, the Migeon-led group contributed to the study of the molecular basis of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Because of Claude’s early involvement with this disorder, he along with John Rock, Georgeanna Klingensmith, RoseMulaikal, and Maria Urban, was also able to report on the longterm follow-up of male and female patients. Another important contribution has been the study of androgen receptors in human skin fibroblasts and the investigation of the androgen insensitivity syndrome. Early studies were carried out with Bruce Keenan, Walter Meyer, Barbara Migeon, JamesAmrhein, Marc Maes, and Charles Sultan. Later the work of Terry Brown provided the molecular basis for the earlier research. Claude has had a long-standing interest in sex differentiation. Recently, he has participated with Gary Berkovitz, Patricia Fechner and collaborators in Peter Goodfellow’s laboratory investigating the role of the sex determining region of Y in testis determination. How does one measuresuch a remarkable career? By the
SOCIETY
THE ENDOCRINE
SOCIETY
JCE & M * 1992 Vo175.No2
Citation
for the Robert H. Williams Distinguished Service Award to Claude J. Migeon
The Robert H. Williams Distinguished Service Award honors a member of The Endocrine Society who, in the image of Dr. Williams, has served the field of endocrinology and has nutured generations of endocrinological scholars. The 1992 recipient is Claude J. Migeon, M.D. Claude was born in Lievin (Pas-De-Calais) France and received his baccalaureate degree from Lycee de Reimsand his medical degree from the University of Paris. The times were uneasy-it was World War II in occupied France. Occasionally Claude can be persuaded to share with fellows and colleagueshis epic adventures as a young student working with the French resistance.And he will alsorelate medical adventures describing how, along with a nun, an elderly physician, and meager medical equipment and medication, he cared for a displaced Ukranian woman in need of a Cesarean section. This unusual trio also provided medical care for badly wounded soldiers, including four Americans from Patton’s army. An early turning point in his career came in 1946, when, confronted with a ward full of children with tuberculous meningitis for whom he could provide no meaningful treatment, he vividly recognized the importance of research to the progressof medicine. Having completed his pediatric training at the Hopital des Enfants Malades in Paris and postdoctoral training in biochemistry at the University of Paris, young Claude Migeon, speaking virtually no English, ventured forth to Baltimore and The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions to study with the Father of Pediatric Endocrinology, Lawson Wilkins. Lawson’s influence on Claude was profound and inspirationalas it was on every one of Wilkins’ fellows, Claude developed a life-long interest in steroid metabolism. To further expand his horizons and his training, he spent three years as a research instructor in biochemistry with Leo Samuels at the University of Utah. This was a heady atmosphere for the young French physician. The group, which included Don Nelson, Chris Eik Ness, Gene Bliss,Avery Sandberg, and others, was involved in the study
of the physiology of cortisol secretion and its relationship to stress. It was in Salt Lake City that Claude reported the isolation of the first androgen from human blood-dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate. In 1955, Claude made a decision that profoundly influenced the course of his career. When Wilkins invited him to return to Hopkins, he accepted with alacrity. Thirty-seven years later he is still there carrying on the remarkable tradition of pediatric endocrinological training that has become one of the hallmarks of this great institution. There are many tales about Claude’s elopement with Barbara Ruben, a Harriet Lane pediatric resident. The most accurate, of course, comes from Barbara and Claude themselves. Accompanied by Bill and Marty Cleveland and by the inimitable Lawson Wilkins, they went off to Arlington, VA. Wilkins provided the joie de vivre as well as the wines, champagnes,and liquors. Wilkins loved this senseof participation in his fellows’ lives, a wonderful trait that Barbara and Claude have perpetuated in their relationships with succeedinggenerations of endocrine fellows. In 1961, Wilkins retired. From then until 1973, Claude shared responsibility for the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology with Dr. Robert M. Blizzard. When Blizzard left Hopkins to becomechairman of the department of pediatrics at Charlottesville, Claude took over the leadership of the Hopkins division. Lawson Wilkins was a great clinician and dearly enjoyed teaching his young fellows who, in those days, were known as “the boys,” even though the group included a few girls. Migeon carried on the tradition, obtaining an NIH training grant in 1961 which provided stipends for six fellows. It was the threat by the Nixon administration in 1974 to eliminate NIH training grants that drove Claude into public affairs. Helping to galvanize the scientific community to defend the
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/75/2/680/2649550 by Rudolph Matas Medical Library user on 02 February 2019
in early childhood education, her teaching experience in a Methodist nursery school in East Harlem, and her career as a mother of two daughters, Carolyn and Rita, prepared her for that job. When Nettie retired as Executive Director in 1988, Nick Christy, then Secretary-Treasurer, published a tribute in the Newsletter of The Endocrine Society acknowledging how Nettie had managed to cope with the long debilitating illness and then death of her husband Fred and with other personal crises. He wrote, “None of these impaired her function or interfered in the slightest with the work of the society. Through them all she maintained her good humor. She unfailingly had time, made time, to help the officers, councilors and members of the society, a society which she had taken on not as a job but a vocation. Nettie was quite literally on duty 24 hr a day. Indeed she became the mother of us all.”
THE
ENDOCRINE
681
number of fellows trained? By the number of scientific reports? By the number of patients cared for? Obviously, there are no simple answers. Rather, the answer lies in the marvelous ability to combine all three and to include compassion and sensitivity for one’s colleagues and patients along the way. Claude Migeon embodies these qualities along with those of the great researcher, teacher, and physician. He is an international scholar in the finest sense of the word, having attracted these and many other young endocrinologists from the world over to study with him at Hopkins. He is truly deserving of the Williams Award. Citation for the Rhbne-Poulene Rorer Pharmaceutical Clinical Investigator Award of The Endocrine Society to Samuel S. C. Yen Samuel S. C. Yen is currently a Professor of Reproductive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where for at least the last 20 yr he has added to our knowledge of the neuroendocrine regulation of the reproductive system, the endocrinology of the menstrual cycle, and the effects of reproductive hormones on metabolism. He has offered provocative theories on the genesisand/or treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome, premenstrual tension, menopause, hypothalamic causesof amenorrhea, pseudocyesis,and anorexia nervosa. He has studied feedback mechanismsas they relate to normal function and disease. Sam was born in Beijing, China, in 1927 and grew up during the Japaneseoccupation of China and the hostilities of World War II. He flew with the Flying Tigers as a teenager. His father was a physician who remained in China, but Sam entered the Medical School of the University of Hong Kong from which he graduated in 1954 followed by an internship in medicine at Queen Mary Hospital. He met Nicholson Eastman, Professor of Obstetrics from Johns Hopkins at this time in Hong Kong and obtained a coveted appointment to
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/75/2/680/2649550 by Rudolph Matas Medical Library user on 02 February 2019
training grant programs, Claude becamea zealot on this issue and so many other public policy issuesaffecting academic science.In recognition of his many contributions in this area, he received the Ayerst Award from The Endocrine society in 1982. During his 40-yr career, Claude Migeon has contributed to the instruction of 65 American fellows and 37 fellows from abroad. Among them, 10 have been or are chairmen of pediatric departments, 3 are assistant or associatedeans of medical schools,and 5 are associatedwith major pharmaceutical companies. Almost all the others are directors of pediatric endocrine clinics and training programs in the United States, Europe, or South America. Thus, Claude’s influence on successivegenerations of pediatric endocrinologists has been profound and certainly worthy of the Williams Award. Claude’s contributions to the body of knowledge of steroid metabolism are legend. Since 1950 he has authored 350 scientific papers and numerous book chapters. Early in his careerhe studied the transplacental passageof steroids.Later, the establishment of the double isotope derivative methods allowed him to extend his studies to plasma androgens in man. Collaborating on these projects were Jean Bertrand, Carl Gemzell, Inese Beitins, Marco Rivarola, JoseSaez, Bernadette Loras, Maguelone Forest, and Roland Tremblay. In the sixties, Claude established the norms of adrenal function in infancy and childhood. Studies of cortisol secretion were carried out with Fritz Kenny, Paul Malvaux, Orville Green, Wellington Hung, and others. In 1970, with Francis Bayard, Inese Beitins, and Ave Kowarski, he published the first description of an RIA method for plasma and urinary aldosterone. Additional aldosterone studies with Bob Blizzard, Grant Liddle, Ave Kowarski, and Virginia Weldon showed that aldosterone secretion was increased in nonsalt-losing congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Additionally, his studiesshowed that although cortisol secretion is related to body size during growth and development, aldosterone secretion is constant from infancy to adulthood. With the help of Perrin White and in collaboration with Pat Donohoue, Neil Van Dop, Nick Jospe, and Romolo Sandrini, the Migeon-led group contributed to the study of the molecular basis of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Because of Claude’s early involvement with this disorder, he along with John Rock, Georgeanna Klingensmith, RoseMulaikal, and Maria Urban, was also able to report on the longterm follow-up of male and female patients. Another important contribution has been the study of androgen receptors in human skin fibroblasts and the investigation of the androgen insensitivity syndrome. Early studies were carried out with Bruce Keenan, Walter Meyer, Barbara Migeon, JamesAmrhein, Marc Maes, and Charles Sultan. Later the work of Terry Brown provided the molecular basis for the earlier research. Claude has had a long-standing interest in sex differentiation. Recently, he has participated with Gary Berkovitz, Patricia Fechner and collaborators in Peter Goodfellow’s laboratory investigating the role of the sex determining region of Y in testis determination. How does one measuresuch a remarkable career? By the
SOCIETY
