Elizabeth F. Neufeld

Who is Elizabeth F. Neufeld?

Elizabeth Fondal Neufeld is an American geneticist whose research has focused on the genetic basis of metabolic disease in humans.

Neufeld and her Russian Jewish family emigrated to the United States from Paris in 1940; they had left Europe as refugees to escape Nazi persecution. The family settled in New York, where she attended Hunter College High School and went on to attend Queens College, graduating in 1948 with a Bachelor of Science. She went on to work as a research assistant at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, looking at blood disorders in mice. Later on, She went to graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. in 1956 for her work on nucleotides and complex carbohydrates.

Neufeld has been widely recognized for her contributions to science, she has been awarded the Wolf Prize, the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1994, "for her contributions to the understanding of the lysosomal storage diseases, demonstrating the strong linkage between basic and applied scientific investigation." She remains at UCLA.