Howard Hiatt

Howard Haym Hiatt (July 22, 1925 – March 2, 2024) was an American medical researcher involved with the discovery of messenger RNA. He was the onetime chair of the department of medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston from 1963 to 1972. He was dean of the Harvard School of Public Health from 1972 to 1984. He was co-founder and associate chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, and was also the Associate Chief of the hospital's Division of Global Health Equity. He was a founding head of the cancer division of Beth Israel Hospital (now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center). He was a member of the team at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, led by François Jacob and Jacques Monod, which first identified and described messenger RNA, and he was part of the team led by James Watson that was among the first to demonstrate messenger RNA in mammalian cells.

Hiatt was married for 60 years to Doris Bieringer, a librarian who co-founded a reference publication for high-school libraries.

Hiatt was a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Early life and education Howard Haym Hiatt was born in Patchogue, New York, in 1925 to a Jewish family. His father was an immigrant from Lithuania who lost much of his family in the Holocaust; he immigrated alone to the United States, where he changed his surname to "Hiatt" from "Chaitowicz" at Ellis Island. Howard enrolled in Harvard College in 1944, and received his medical degree in 1948 from the Harvard Medical School. He was trained in clinical medicine, biochemistry, and molecular biology. outlined methods for addressing some very basic problems of the American healthcare system.

Personal life Hiatt was married to Doris Bieringer, a librarian who co-founded a reference publication for high-school libraries, from 1947 until her death in 2007. Beringer served as president of the United Service for New Americans which helped to resettle European Jews in the United States after World War II. Hiatt also served as vice-president of the Associated Jewish Philanthropies of Boston, and as a member of a presidential committee. This committee advised the Truman Administration on displaced persons before being named Head of Massachusetts Commission on Refugees in 1957. Hiatt died from pulmonary hypertension at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 2, 2024, at the age of 98.