Mommaerts, W. F. H. M.

Wilfried Franciscus Henricus Maria Mommaerts was born on Mar. 4, 1917 in Broechem, Antwerp, Belgium; BA in biology (1937), MA (1939), Univ. of Leiden; in 1941 he joined the research group of the future Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi at the Institute for Medical Chemistry in Szeged, Hungary; received his Ph. D in 1943 from the Univ. of Kolozsvár, Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania); worked at the American Univ. of Beirut (1945-48); came to the US to continue his research at the Duke Univ. School of Medicine (1948-53) and Western Reserve Univ. School of Medicine (1953-56); in 1956 became prof. of medicine and physiology at UCLA, directing the LA County Heart Assn. Research Laboratory and serving as chair of the physiology dept. in the UCLA School of Medicine (1966-87); retired in 1987; he died on Feb. 2, 1994 in LA.