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Tue Dec  3 15:01:46 EST 1991

T/36  Preface for Ehrlich-Schwerin brochure.
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Joshua Lederberg
University Professor and President Emeritus
The Rockefeller University

Paul Ehrlich's career in many ways epitomizes the ideals and
successes of the Rockefeller University.  Fundamental
advances in basic biology, microbiology, cytochemistry and
immunology are instrumental in achieving the most important
benefits to human health.  The practitioner may afford direct
benefit to thousands of grateful patients.  The medical
scientist provides the new tools used by the practitioner,
and enhances the welfare of millions, but often remains
unknown to the public at large.

Ehrlich's contributions cut across so many fields that it
would be difficult to summarize them.  He was responsible
for many specific stains that empowered microscopy of tissue
cells and parasites.  That specificity inspired his development
of the
concepts of receptors and ligands which underlie the most
important progress in cellular biology and medicine today.
Likewise, he developed the first synthetic chemotherapeutic
agents, and applied them to common and to exotic diseases,
including parasites that have subsequently been neglected
to our shame.  Applying concepts of cell surface receptors
to cellular immunology, he laid the groundwork of contemporary theory
in that field.

Ehrlich's career was intertwined with that of the
Rockefeller University in many other more personal ways.
His own research was a paradigm for the planning of the
original institute.  Conversely he was an early recipient
of a research grant-in-aid, and an avid collaborator during
the Institute's earliest days.  In Germany, he was hampered,
but obviously not broken, by the anti-semitism that
prevailed in medical academic circles.  That stain was not
unknown in the U.S. at that time.  It is one of the great
virtues of our founders that ethnic discrimination was
notably lacking at our own Institute -- witness a
constellation that included names like Simon Flexner,
Jacques Loeb and Hideyo Noguchi.

Very little of the research now going on at The Rockefeller
has not been significantly rooted in Paul Ehrlich's
concrete scientific accomplishments.  All of it embodies the
same ideals, and we can be proud of this opportunity to
celebrate that tradition.