Honoring Aaron Lerner

We are here today to celebrate a unique and distinguished man, Aaron B. Lerner. I have the privilege of opening these festivities by telling you something of Aaron, realizing full well that many of you know more about certain aspects of his life than I do, but relishing, nonetheless, this particular prerequisite of my position as dean. Aaron was born in 1920 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was the oldest son and second child in a sibship of four, born to parents both of whom were immigrants from Czarist Russia. Minneapolis was Aaron's home for his first 25 years; he left in 1945 after receiving B.A., Ph.D., and M.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota. From 1945 to 1946 he interned at Staten Island Marine Hospital, then spent three years in biochemistry at the Army Medical Center and at Case Western Reserve, where he developed an interest in melanin biosynthesis which he has retained throughout his career. In 1949 Aaron joined the University of Michigan faculty as an Assistant Professor of Dermatology. Six years later, Paul Beeson recruited him to Yale where, in 1958, he was appointed professor and, in 1971, chairman of the newly formed Department of Dermatology-a post he will hold until he is succeeded by Richard Edelson on January 1, 1986. His 30 years at Yale have been full ones-as clinician, teacher, administrator, and investigator. Aaron and the colleagues he recruited made Yale's dermatology program a premier one nationally-a model for others to praise and to compete with. He interested a generation of medical students in academic or clinical careers in dermatology. He helped train dermatology residents and fostered a collegial relationship between full-time faculty and community practitioners without the town/gown tensions so characteristic of other clinical specialties. He argued forcefully, tenaciously, and usually successfully for a variety of institutional things important to him, such as the Yale system of medical education, the importance of Ph.D.'s in clinical departments, and the need for the University to recognize the significances of its School of Medicine. But, most of all, professionally Aaron has been a scientist. He demonstrated his investigative acumen early-during medical school when he and Cecil Watson discovered the first patient with cryoglobulinemia and isolated the protein from serum. When, a few years later, he turned his attention to the field of cutaneous pigmentation, he proceeded to make a series of major contributions, including early definition of the mechanism of enzymatic cleavage of phenylalanine and tyrosine, isolation and characterization of melanocyte stimulating hormone (MSH) and of melatonin, recognition of the universal nature of vitiligo in the animal kingdom, clues to the mechanism of action of MSH, and the development of experimental therapies for melanoma. This work, not surprisingly, has brought Aaron considerable acclaim, notably the Myron-Gordon Award for pigment cell research in 1969, election to the