VOLUME 12, NUMBER 12 • DECEMBER 15, 2000

In memoriam: Edward H. Ahrens Jr.

Edward H. Ahrens Jr., professor emeritus at The Rockefeller University and a pioneer in early research on lipids and cholesterol metabolism, died Sat., Dec. 9. He was 85.

In attempting to separate and identify fractions of the complex mixture of fats that exist in all biological systems, Ahrens and his colleagues introduced a variety of physico-chemical techniques, including countercurrent distribution, invented by another Rockefeller scientist, the late Lyman C. Craig, and column and gas-liquid chromatography. These methods made it possible to define extremely minute amounts of fatty material.

His clinical studies spanned more than four decades and centered on fat digestion and absorption, fat transport through the body, control of serum cholesterol levels, deposition of fat in adipose tissues and factors controlling the composition of motherÕs milk. His primary interest in later years was the relationship of cholesterol metabolism to the genesis of coronary heart disease. His research on the synthesis and degradation of cholesterol in patients are classics of patient-oriented research.

Ahrens joined The Rockefeller University, then known as The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, in 1946 as an assistant. He was a senior fellow of the National Research Council from 1949 to 1950 and a National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis senior fellow from 1950 to 1952. From 1958 to 1959, he worked as a fellow of the National Science Foundation with G. Popják of the Medical Research Council, London. He was appointed professor at Rockefeller in 1960 and became the university's first Frederick Henry Leonhardt Professor in 1982.