(born 1926). Polish-born American endocrinologist Andrew V. Schally was a corecipient, with Roger Guillemin and Rosalyn Yalow, of the 1977 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He was noted for isolating and synthesizing hormones produced by the hypothalamus; these hormones control the activities of other hormone-producing glands.
Schally was born on Nov. 30, 1926, in Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania). He fled Poland with his family in 1939, and he received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal in 1957. He became a U.S. citizen in 1962. That same year he was made chief of endocrine and polypeptide laboratories at the Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the same time he joined the medical faculty of the Tulane University School of Medicine, becoming a professor in 1967. He became senior medical investigator with the VA in 1973.
Schally’s research helped elucidate pathways of hormone regulation and contributed to the development of fertility treatments and contraceptives. In 1975 Schally and Guillemin received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award. (See also Nobel prizes.)