Somogyi, Michael Dr., 1883-1971

Dr. Michael Somogyi was born in Reinsdorf, Austria-Hungary in 1883. He received a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Budapest and attended graduate school at Cornell University. After WW I he emigrated to the United States. He became an instructor of biochemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. While teaching there he assisted Drs. Philip A. Shaffer and Edward Adelbert Doisy in perfecting a commercial insulin preparation. Somogyi became a figure of controversy in the medical world when he began to advocate a more restrained use of insulin in the treatment of diabetic patients. Stormy relations with the new Director of the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, where Somogyi held the post of director of the clinical laboratory clouded Somogyi's last years. A serious stroke suffered in 1969 curtailed his activities and he died in St. Louis at age 88 in 1971.