Donald S. Fredrickson, MD (August 8, 1924-June 7, 2002)
by Alan D. Rogol, MD, Ph.D
Dr. Fredrickson received his MD in 1949 from Michigan and did post graduate work at the Peter Bent Brigham and MGH in Boston. He joined the NIH in 1953 as a clinical associate and stayed on in the Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Metabolism. His clinical/research interests were in sterols and then the structure of the plasma lipoproteins, their role in fat transport and some genetic factors regulating them.
During his career at NIH, including being Institute Director, he and his laboratory discovered Tangier disease (absent HDL-C) and cholesteryl ester storage disease, a lysosomal enzyme deficiency. He is best known for the system for identifying and classifying blood-lipid abnormalities based on plasma lipoprotein patterns (Circulation 1965; 31:321).