Jules Freund, M.D.

Jules Freund

 Brief Bio

Jules Freund was the thirty-ninth president of the American Association of Immunologists, serving from 1955 to 1956. He was the first chief of the Division of Applied Immunology of the Public Health Research Institute in New York City from 1943 to 1956. Freund’s scientific contributions were many, but he is most remembered for developing a technique for enhancing immune responses with the adjuvant that bears his name.

Freund received his M.D. from the Royal Hungarian University in Budapest in 1913. Following service as a medical intern (1913–1914) and hygienist (1914–1918) in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War, Freund was an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Royal Hungarian University from 1917 to 1923. He came to the United States in August 1922 for a joint fellowship at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Antitoxin and Vaccine Laboratory. After completing the fellowship, Freund spent a few months studying under Jacques Loeb and John H. Northrop at the Rockefeller Institute of Medicine before accepting a position as a bacteriologist at the Von Ruck Research Laboratory for Tuberculosis in Asheville, North Carolina, where he remained from 1923 to 1926. He joined Eugene Opie’s (AAI ’23, president 1928–1929) staff at the Henry Phipps Institute in Philadelphia as an associate bacteriologist in 1926 and, six years later, moved with Opie to the Department of Pathology at Cornell University Medical College, where Freund was an assistant professor from 1932 to 1945. He was the assistant director of the New York City Department of Health from 1938 to 1945 and joined the staff of the Public Health Research Institute shortly after its opening in 1943. He was appointed chief of the Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1957 and, despite being diagnosed with multiple myeloma later that year, held the position until his death on April 22, 1960.

 Lasker Award

1959 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award “for new findings in the field of immunology and allergy which have strengthened immunization procedures against such diseases as tuberculosis, malaria, rabies and poliomyelitis.” Click here for more details.

 AAI Service History

Joined: 1924
President: 1955–1956
Vice President: 1954–1955
Councillor: 1951–1954
Secretary-Treasurer: 1948–1951

The Journal of Immunology
Associate Editor: 1949–1954
Editorial Board: 1954–1959

Other Service
AAI representative to FASEB Board: 1954–1956, 1956–1957 (chair)

 Awards and Honors

 Institutional/Biographical Links

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