Arnold Rice Rich (March 28, 1893 – April 17, 1968) was an American
pathologist.
Career
Born March 28, 1893, in
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...
, Rich attended the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
, majoring in biology, and then the
Johns Hopkins Medical School in
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...
, from which he received his
M.D. degree in 1919. He remained associated with Hopkins the rest of his career. He was appointed Chairman of the Department of Pathology and pathologist-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1944, until he retired in 1958.
Work
Rich had broad interests in medicine. Among his many contributions, he classified
jaundice, helped understand the formation of
bile pigment, studied the relationship between
hypersensitivity and
immunity, especially in
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
(on which he was one of the reigning experts) and discovered the
phagocytic function of the Gaucher cell, the hallmark of
Gaucher's disease.
A number of diseases or conditions are named after Rich, including:
*
Hamman-Rich syndrome and the
*
Rich focus
Personal life
Rich was Jewish. His father Samuel Rice was an
Ashkenazi
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...
immigrant from
Košice
Košice is the largest city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary. With a population of approximately 230,000, Košice is the second-largest cit ...
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present day Slovakia), while his mother was a
Sephardi Jew from
Vicksburg, Mississippi. Samuel Rice owned a successful shoe store in Birmingham.
In 1925 Arnold married the pianist and composer Helen Jones. They had two daughters: the poet
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012 ) and the writer Cynthia Rich (1933- ). Arnold Rice Rich died April 17, 1968, in Baltimore, Maryland.
References
External links
Brief biography of Richi
WhoNamedIt?Arnold Rice Rich, A Biographical Memoir by Ella H. Oppenheimer
1893 births
1968 deaths
American Ashkenazi Jews
American pathologists
American people of Slovak-Jewish descent
University of Virginia alumni
Jewish physicians
Johns Hopkins Hospital physicians
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine alumni
Physicians from Birmingham, Alabama
20th-century American physicians
20th-century American Sephardic Jews
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