Fuller Albright (January 12, 1900 – December 8, 1969) was an American endocrinologist who made numerous contributions to his field, especially to the area of calcium metabolism.[1] Albright made great strides and contributions to the understanding of disorders associated with calcium and phosphate abnormalities in the body. He also was a published author and in his books he detailed his findings. [2]
Albright was born on January 12, 1900, in Buffalo, New York. He was the third child of John J. Albright, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who constructed the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, and Susan Fuller, a Smith College graduate who was Albright's second wife. Albright had three children from his first marriage and six from his marriage to Fuller. His maternal grandparents were Eben and Nancy Fuller, of Lancaster, Massachusetts.[3] His paternal grandparents were Joseph Jacob and Elizabeth S. Albright, both from Pennsylvania.
In the early 1930s he returned to Boston, where he became a member of the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). At MGH, he rapidly developed an endocrinology research group.[1] In 1939, he began a longtime research collaboration with Anne Pappenheimer Forbes.[5]
Since 1981, the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research has every year given the Fuller Albright Award in recognition of meritorious scientific accomplishment in the field of bone and mineral research.[9]
In 1930, he met Claire Birge (1906-1990) of Greenwich, Connecticut,[10] daughter of Walter William Birge and Mabelle Clair Brown, and by 1933, they were married.[11] As a wedding present, Albright's father bought them a house in Brookline, Massachusetts next door to conductor Serge Koussevitzky.[10] Together, they had two sons:
Read Albright (1939-2011), who married Jo Anne Pierson[12][13]
Birge Albright, (1935-2023) who married Carol Bonomo (b. 1938), an author[14]
Albright developed Parkinson's disease in 1937. By 1956 his symptoms were so intractable that he underwent experimental brain surgery, chemical pallidotomy (obliteration of the globus pallidus by injection of alcohol). The intervention on the right was a success, but the left-sided procedure was complicated by haemorrhage, which left him aphasic and comatose[clarification needed] for the remaining 13 years of his life, during which he was nursed at Massachusetts General Hospital.[1] (Later, Claire married Richard Horace Bassett (1900-1995), an artist and writer.[15])
^F. Albright, W. V. Consolazio, F. S. Coombs, J. H. Talbot; H. W. Sulkowitch. Metabolic studies and therapy in a case of nephrocalcinosis with rickets and dwarfism. Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, 1940, 66: 7–33.
