Andrew Schally

Andrew Schally
Born	Andrzej Viktor Schally (1926-11-30) 30 November 1926 Wilno, Poland
Nationality	Polish, later Canadian and American citizen
Education	McGill University
Medical career
Profession	Medicine
Institutions	Baylor College of Medicine Tulane University University of Miami
Specialism	Endocrinology
Notable prizes	Albert Lasker Award (1975) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1977)

Andrzej Viktor "Andrew" Schally (born November 30, 1926) is a Polish-American endocrinologist and Nobel Prize laureate (1977) in medicine, sharing the prize that year with Roger Guillemin and Rosalyn Sussman Yalow.

Life and career

Schally was born in Wilno, Second Polish Republic (since 1945 Vilnius, Lithuania), as the son of Gen. Brigadier Kazimierz Schally, who was Chief of the Cabinet of President Ignacy Mościcki of Poland, and Maria (Łącka), a Polish noble woman from an old and known family.

In September 1939, when Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Schally escaped with the Poland's President Ignacy Mościcki, Prime Minister and the whole cabinet to then neutral Romania, where they were interned.

I was fortunate to survive the holocaust while living among the Jewish-Polish Community in Roumania. I used to speak Polish, Roumanian, Yiddish, Italian and some German and Russian, but I have almost completely forgotten them, and my French in which I used to excel is also now far from fluent.

Immediately after the war, in 1945, he moved via Italy and France to the United Kingdom. Schally received his education in Scotland and England. In 1952, he moved to Canada. He received his doctorate in endocrinology from McGill University in 1957. That same year he left for a research career in the United States where he has worked principally at Tulane University. Schally currently conducts research in Endocrinology at the Miami Veteran's Administration Medical Center in Miami, Fl. A Canadian citizen when he left Canada, Schally became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1962. He was affiliated with the Baylor College of Medicine for some years in Houston, Texas.

He developed a new realm of knowledge concerning the brain's control over the body chemistry. His works also addressed birth control methods and growth hormones. Together with Roger Guillemin he described the neurohormone GnRH that controls FSH and LH.

Schally received an honoris causa Doctors degree from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He received a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1977.

He was married to Margaret Rachel White (divorced), and Ana Maria de Medeiros-Comaru.

References

• Aleksandra Ziółkowska, Korzenie są polskie (The Roots Are Polish), Warsaw, 1992, ISBN 83-7066-406-7.
• Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm, The Roots Are Polish, Toronto, 2004, ISBN 0-920517-05-6.
• Nicholas Wade, The Nobel Duel, Garden City, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981.