Alexander Gordon Bearn

Alexander Gordon Bearn ( born March 29, 1923 in Cheam, Surrey, England; † 15 May 2009 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States ) was a British-American physician and geneticist. It concerned itself with the study of Wilson's disease, for which he found new diagnostic and therapeutic methods.

Bearn acquired in 1950 from the University of London medical doctor degree. The following year he went to New York City and became an Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. There, he specialized in hereditary diseases and founded in 1957 one of the first laboratories for human genetics in the United States. Bearn realized that Wilson's disease is an autosomal recessive genetic disease. Through his research, he contributed to the rapprochement of the 1950s still strictly separate disciplines genetics and medicine. In 1964 he was appointed Professor of Medicine, 1966, he moved to Cornell University.

In 1971 he became president of the American Society of Human Genetics. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1972, as he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. From 1979 to 1988 he was senior vice president for medical and scientific affairs at Merck & Co, Inc..

Publications

• Sir Archibald Garrod and the Individuality of Man, 1993
• Sir Clifford Allbutt: Scholar and Physician, 2007
• Sir Francis Richard Fraser: A Canny Scot Shapes British Medicine, 2008