Alan W. Bernheimer

Alan Weyl Bernheimer Sr. (December 9, 1913, Philadelphia – January 3, 2006, New York City) was an American microbiologist, known as a pioneer of modern bacterial toxinology.

Biography Bernheimer graduated with a B.S. in 1935 and an A.M. in 1937 from Temple University, where he worked as an assistant in biology from 1935 to 1937. In 1942, he received his Ph.D. in medical sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. His Ph.D. thesis is entitled Studies on the antigenic specificity of Paramecium and studies on the massive cultivation of Streptococcus pyogenes. From 1937 to 1938 he was an instructor in bacteriology at Pennsylvania State College of Optometry (now called Salus University). In the department of microbiology of (what is now called) the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, he was an instructor from 1941 to 1945,

During WW II, Bernheimer contributed to the development of a vaccine against gas gangrene. Throughout his career, he was dedicated to laboratory work. He and his co-workers compared toxins produced by a wide variety of organisms. He did research on venoms from insects, spiders, snakes, sea jellies, and sea anemones, and demonstrated how such venoms sometimes share biochemical and serological properties with bacterial toxins. In studies of cholesterol oxidase, a bacterial cytotoxin derived from Rhodococcus equi, Bernheimer and his colleagues showed that a cytotoxin was rendered lethal to rabbits made hypercholesterolemic by diet. Bernheimer was the author or co-author of more than 150 scientific papers and the editor of several books. In April 1976 he gave the inaugural Stuart Mudd Lecture of the Eastern Pennsylvania Branch of the American Society for Microbiology.

Bernheimer developed a form of camera-less photography that he called Reflectographs.

In March 1942 he married Harriet Poller (1919–2009), who became a professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. They had a son, Alan Weyl Bernheimer Jr., known as the poet Alan Bernheimer.

Selected publications Articles

Books