Herman Eisen

Herman Nathaniel Eisen (October 15, 1918 – November 2, 2014) was an American immunologist and cancer researcher. He served on the faculty at New York University School of Medicine in the early 1950s, became the Chief of Dermatology at the Washington University School of Medicine in 1955, and was a founding member of the MIT Center for Cancer Research (now called the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research). Eisen retired and assumed professor emeritus status in 1989, but continued to be active as a researcher; he was working on a manuscript the day he died in 2014.

Early life and education Eisen was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1918, one of four children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His undergraduate studies at New York University began in 1934 but were interrupted by a case of tuberculosis, which required him to withdraw from school for a year; he later recalled this as a key event in his life inspiring him to focus on intellectual activities. After graduation in 1939, he began as a medical student at NYU and received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1943. He worked briefly as an assistant in pathology at Columbia University, where he was first exposed to immunology research by Michael Heidelberger.

Research Eisen's research is regarded as foundational in the field of immunology. After his death, he was remembered as "the last of the great immunochemists". He is particularly well known for his studies of affinity maturation of antibodies beginning in the late 1950s while he was at Washington University. Much of this work was conducted with postdoctoral fellow Lisa Steiner, who went on to become the first woman in the MIT Department of Biology. In the 1980s Eisen changed research interests from a focus on antibodies to a focus on T cells and cell-mediated immunity.

Personal life Eisen's wife Natalie was also a physician and practiced as a pediatrician in New York, served as assistant director of Bellevue Hospital in St. Louis, and then practiced at the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center in Boston. The couple had five children. Eisen remained an active research scientist for many years following his official retirement and was working on a manuscript related to antibody affinity the day he died in 2014.