Jacques J. Bronfenbrenner, Ph.D.

Jacques J. Bronfenbrenner

 Brief Bio

Jacques Jacob Bronfenbrenner (1883–1953) was the twenty-ninth president of the American Association of Immunologists, serving from 1942 to 1946,* He was the chair of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine from 1928 to 1952.

Exiled from tsarist Russia after supporting the failed socialist revolution of 1905, Bronfenbrenner settled in Paris, where he spent two years in Élie Metchnikoff’s laboratory at the Pasteur Institute (1907–1909). At the invitation of Simon Flexner (AAI ’20), Bronfenbrenner moved to the United States in 1909 and became a research fellow at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, where he remained until 1913. While at the Rockefeller Institute, he earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Columbia University in 1912. Bronfenbrenner held several positions before his appointment as chair of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at Washington University in 1928, including director of the Research and Diagnostic Laboratories at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh (1913–1917); assistant professor of preventive medicine and hygiene at Harvard University (1917–1923), where he received his D.P.H. in 1919; and associate member of the Rockefeller Institute (1923–1928). Upon his retirement from Washington University in 1952, Bronfenbrenner accepted a position as research professor at Bowman Gray School of Medicine (now Wake Forest University School of Medicine) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which he held until his death the following year.

 

* Presidents of AAI typically serve a one-year term. Because elections were suspended in 1943, 1944, and 1945 due to the Second World War, Bronfenbrenner’s term lasted four years.

 AAI Service History

Joined: 1920
President: 1942–1946
Councillor: 1941–1942, 1946–1950

The Journal of Immunology
Board of Editors: 1916–1942
Associate Editor: 1942
Editor: 1943–1949
Editorial Board: 1950–1953

 Awards and Honors

  • Pasteur Award, Society of Illinois Bacteriologists, 1950

 Institutional/Biographical Links

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