Andrew Victor Schally

Andrew Victor Schally, the Polish American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1977 for his discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain.

Andrew Schally was a co-founder of the field of neuroendocrinology, the study of how the central nervous system controls the endocrine system, which comprises all the glands that secrete hormones.

He received his PhD from McGill in 1957 and moved that same year to the United States where he has remained ever since. Schally became an American citizen in 1962.

Schally was born in November 30, 1926, in Wilno, Poland to Casmir and Maria Schally.

He survived the years of World War II in the Polish Jewish community in Romania. After the war, he continued his studies in Scotland and at the University of London. After graduating from the University of London, he worked at the National Institute for Medical Research from 1949 until 1952 when he moved to Canada.

He became citizen during his five years in Canada. He worked at McGill University, Montreal, obtaining his PhD in biochemistry in 1957. His work began in Montreal and continued in the United States, he investigated hormonal secretions of the pituitary gland and the closely related hypothalamus in the brain, and how the two interrelated.

In 1962 he became head of the endocrine and polypeptide laboratories at the Veterans Administration Hospital, New Orleans.

His other honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Andrew Victor Schally