Fredrickson, Donald Sharp, 1924-2002

Donald S. Fredrickson (1924-2002), a physiologist and science administrator, made signal contributions to American medicine over the course of four decades, first as a laboratory scientist, then as a leader of several prominent medical research institutions. Fredrickson's studies of the connection between lipid metabolism (the processing of lipids, chief among them fats and cholesterol, in the body) and heart disease made him one of the most widely cited physiologists of the 1960s and 1970s. His system of classifying disorders in lipid metabolism was adopted by the World Health Organization as an international standard for identifying increased risks of coronary artery disease, heart attack, and stroke linked to the consumption of fats and cholesterol. He also discovered two diseases, cholesterol ester storage disease and Tangier Disease, caused by genetic disorders in the storage of cholesterol in the body. As director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's foremost biomedical research facility, Fredrickson mediated between scientists and the federal government during contentious, far-ranging debates over the direction of medical research policy, research funding, and the potential dangers of genetic engineering that took place in the second half of the 1970s.

Donald Sharp Fredrickson was born in Cañon City, Colorado, on August 8, 1924. During World War II he enlisted in the army reserves at the University of Colorado before transferring to the Army Specialized Training Program in engineering at the University of Michigan, a subject for which military tests had indicated a special aptitude. After another aptitude test and with the end of the war in sight, Fredrickson settled on medicine as his true calling. He received his bachelor's degree in 1946 and his medical degree in 1949, both from the University of Michigan. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1957.

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