Samuel Gelfan

Samuel Gelfan (16 January 1903, Russian Empire – 16 March 1975, Ossining, New York) was an American professor of neurophysiology. He was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1932–1933.

Education and career Gelfan graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with A.B. in 1925 and Ph.D. in 1927. There he was a teaching fellow in biology from 1925 to 1927. He was from 1928 to 1930 a Donnelly Research Fellow at the University of Chicago and from 1930 to 1932 an assistant professor of physiology and pharmacology at the University of Alberta. For the academic year 1932–1933 he investigated muscle fibre physiology with Edgar D. Adrian at the University of Cambridge. At the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons he was an associate professor of physiology before he joined the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine. From 1946 to 1952 he was at Yale, where he became director of the aeromedical unit. There he and his colleagues studied the mammalian response to high‐altitude flight and explosive decompression. He was a professor of neurophysiology in the department of neurology and neurosurgery of the New York Medical College (NYMC) from 1952 to 1973, when he retired. At NYMC he did research on spinal cord physiology with grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Gelfan was the author or co-author of articles published in the American Journal of Physiology, Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Science,

Selected publications (See divinyl ether.)