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NeoReviews Vol.9 No.1 2008 e5
© 2008 American Academy of Pediatrics

Historical Perspectives

Perinatal Profiles: Alexandre Minkowski: Founder of "Biology of the Neonate"

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

	Introduction

 
Almost every country boasts pioneers in the field of neonatology. Most neonatologists in the United States are familiar with the role that the French obstetricians Stéphane Tarnier and Pierre Budin played in promulgating the use of incubators for preterm infants. In addition, Budin wrote about umbilical cord clamping and outlined many important principles of the care of newborn infants in his book "Le Nourisson" (The Nursling), which was published in French in 1900 and in English in 1907. However, the person in France who arguably exerted the greatest influence on neonatology in the 20th century is the pediatrician Alexandre Minkowski.

	The Early Years

 
Minkowski was born in Paris in 1915 to two Jewish psychiatrists, Eugee and Françoise Minkowski, who originally were from Poland. His secondary education was at L'Ecole Alsacienne, and he attended medical school at the University of Paris. During the Second World War he joined the resistance movement in Paris in 1941 and subsequently was awarded the Medaille de la Résistance as well as the Croix de Guerre 39–45 (1939 to 1945 War Cross).

Immediately after the war, he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bursary to study with Clement Smith at Harvard from 1946 through 1947. He was one of many international pediatricians who spent time with Clem Smith in Boston learning about fetal and neonatal physiology. He remained in the United States for some time after this, assimilating knowledge about clinical neonatology from pediatricians interested in the field such as Julius Hess in Chicago and Sam Levine in New York. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Alistair G.S. Philip, MD, FRCPE^*

^* Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, Calif