Elizabeth Roboz Einstein

Elizabeth Roboz-Einstein (April 11, 1904 – January 9, 1995) was a biochemist and neuroscientist known for purifying and characterizing myelin basic protein (MBP), investigating its potential role in the neurodegenerative disease multiple sclerosis (MS), and helping pioneer the field of neurochemistry.

Early life and education Elizabeth Roboz was born in 1904 in Szászváros, Transylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (now Orăștie, Romania). Her father, a high school teacher and the town's chief rabbi, died in 1914, and her mother moved Elizabeth and her five siblings to Nyíregyháza.

In 1952, she left Stanford and moved to Georgetown University, where she took a position of associate professor of biochemistry, teaching medical students as well as lecturing at the Veterans Administration hospital. It was at Georgetown that she developed an interest in multiple sclerosis after studying neurochemistry to teach her students.

She moved to the University of California, San Francisco's School of Medicine in 1959

She was a member of the American Chemical Society, the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, and the American Academy of Neurology.

Research Roboz-Einstein, as well as Karian Kies at the National Institute of Health's NIMH, identified myelin basic protein (MBP) as being the antigen responsible for inciting the immune response in experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE), a model system used to study multiple sclerosis (MS) and other demyelinating diseases. Scientists had known that they could produce an autoimmune response that led to encephalitis and demyelination (degradation of the fatty sheath called myelin that insulates nerve fibers) by injecting animals with nervous tissue, but before then they did not know what specifically in this tissue was inciting the immune response. Roboz-Einstein and Kies were able to purify MBP and show it caused EAE.

In 1968, she received a $28,405 research grant from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which Einstein and her colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, including Dr. Li-pen Chao, used to investigate what made this protein encephalitogenic. She also developed methods to measure levels of immunoglobulin and glycoproteins in components of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and studied how their alteration resulted in disease.

In addition to investigating diseases of the nervous system, she performed research to try to better understand normal nervous system development. At the University of California, San Francisco, she led an investigation of the proteins in neural tissue, particularly those formed during myelinogenesis, and how they change throughout the course of development.

Personal life Roboz married Hans Albert Einstein, first son of physicist Albert Einstein, and professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in June 1959. They did not have any children together, although Hans had four children from his first marriage to Frieda Knecht, only two of whom survived into adulthood. Hans died on July 26, 1973, and Roboz wrote a biography of him, Hans Albert Einstein: Reminiscences of his Life and our Life Together (1992). Roboz-Einstein also corresponded with microbiologist Esther Lederberg.

Her interests included travel, cooking, music, and nature. Medaglia d'Oro di Milano award, International Society for Neurochemistry, 1970. A special issue of the journal Neurochemical Research was dedicated to her in 1984. Named one of the ten Bay Area Distinguished Women in 1965 by the San Francisco Examiner. Raskob Faculty Award for researchers at Catholic universities, Georgetown University, 1956

Selected publications

Proteins of the Brain and the Cerebrospinal Fluid in Health and Disease (1982). Hans Albert Einstein: Reminiscences of his Life and our Life Together (1992).