Rockefeller Retirements

Last January John Davison Rockefeller Jr. reached the age of 65 and last fortnight he announced that, according to regulations, he had retired from the Rockefeller General Education Board, and would soon quit the Rockefeller Foundation. Last week, to the surprise of scientists all over the U. S., the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research enforced retirement rules on its working scientists for the first time, suddenly announced the withdrawal of five of its most brilliant members. Although the five scientists will hand over their administrative duties to younger colleagues, they will all receive pensions, and most of them will continue their important research work in Foundation laboratories. The retirees, five of the keenest scientific brains on earth:

Dr. Florence Rena Sabin, 67. In 1893, plain, blonde Florence Sabin graduated from Smith College. After a short period of teaching zoology, she bravely entered Johns Hopkins Medical School, thus starting a long career of firsts: first woman to graduate from the Hopkins, first woman to teach there, first woman member of the Rockefeller Institute, first (and only) woman member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is famed for her discovery of the origin and processes of the lymphatic system, her account of the development of blood cells, her studies of the blood in tuberculosis, her testing of chemical substances isolated from the tubercle bacillus. In 1929 Dr. Simon Flexner, former head of the Institute, called her "the greatest living woman scientist and one of the foremost scientists of all time."

Dr. Karl Landsteiner, 70. Nervous, Austrian-born Dr. Landsteiner won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Medicine, for discovering that there are four main types of human blood with at least 30 subtypes. As a result of his discovery, blood transfusion ha become a safe operation. His blood tests showed that anthropoid apes and human beings are more closely related than anthropoid apes and monkeys, or monkeys and men. More recently he has been working on the chemistry of body immunity. He has thrown light on the relationship of toxins and similar substances to the antibodies they provoke.

Dr. Phoebus Aaron Theodore Levene 70. Born in Russia, Dr. Levene practiced medicine in New York City for a few months, then eagerly leaped into biochemistry, a field in which he had practically no training. After more than ten years of impatient plodding, shaggy-thatched Phoebus Levene made a name for himself, and by 1907 he was an outstanding member of the Institute. One of his most famous contributions is his detailed picture of the chemical structure of nucleic acids. Nuclei acids are constituents of cell nuclei and their chromosomes, tiny inheritance carriers which exist in the dividing cells of plants and animals. He is also world renowned for his work in vitamins, hormones, amino-acids.

Dr. Winthrop John Vanleuven Osterhout, 67. For many years Dr. Osterhout taught botany at Harvard. In 1925 he went to the Institute to devote all his time to a study of fundamental life-processes. His special studies have been fertilization in plants, formation of chromosomes, photosynthesis (conversion of carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates by green plants), and osmosis (passage of liquids through membranes).

Dr. Alexis Carrel, 65. Most famed of the five, bald, poetic Dr. Carrel won the 1912 Nobel Prize for his remarkable success in suturing blood vessels and transplanting organs. For 27 years he has kept a scrap of chicken heart alive and growing. Every few days the heart has to be trimmed, for it spreads so rapidly that if left alone it would fill the laboratory in a year. At present Dr. Carrel is continuing experiments with Colleague Charles Augustus Lindbergh on the "perfusion pump" (TIME, June 13), which keeps other disembodied organs alive outside the parent body for indefinite periods of time. Next July Dr. Carrel expects to return to his native France.

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