Fuller Albright

Fuller Albright was an American endocrinologist, born in Buffalo, New York in 1900, who made major contributions to the understanding of calcium and phosphate metabolism. He studied at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, trained at Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins, and spent a year in Vienna with the pathologist Jakob Erdheim before returning to Boston, where he built an endocrinology research group at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is credited with describing polyostotic fibrous dysplasia, which became known as McCune-Albright syndrome, the features of hyperparathyroidism, the mechanism of Cushing's syndrome, renal tubular acidosis and forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and he recognized the effect of menopause on osteoporosis. He led several professional societies, and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research has given the Fuller Albright Award since 1981. He developed Parkinson's disease in 1937 and died in 1969.