Ilya Mark Scheinker: Controversial Neuroscientist and Refugee From National Socialist Europe

Abstract

Russian-born, Vienna-trained neurologist and neuropathologist Ilya Mark Scheinker collaborated with Josef Gerstmann and Ernst Sträussler in 1936 to describe the familial prion disorder now known as Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease. Because of Nazi persecution following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Scheinker fled from Vienna to Paris, then after the German invasion of France, to New York. With the help of neurologist Tracy Putnam, Scheinker ended up at the University of Cincinnati, although his position was never guaranteed. He more than doubled his prior publications in America, and authored three landmark neuropathology textbooks. Despite his publications, he was denied tenure and had difficulty professionally in the Midwest because of prejudice against his European mannerisms. He moved back to New York for personal reasons in 1952, dying prematurely just 2 years later. Scheinker was twice uprooted, but persevered and eventually found some success as a refugee.

The Pioneer Neuropharmacologist Alfred Fröhlich (1871–1953) and the Origins of Neuroendocrinology: A Sesquicentennial Remembrance

“…At that time, another representative of Viennese neurology also found academic shelter in Cincinnati. The Russian Jewish neuropathologist Ilya M. Scheinker (1902–1954), of Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker fame, was hired in 1941 by the University of Cincinnati Medical School as an instructor in pathology to head the Neuropathology Service at Cincinnati General Hospital (Zeidman and others 2016). Fröhlich’s former chairman of pharmacology in Vienna, Ernst Pick, also emigrated to the United States in 1939; he was appointed clinical professor of pharmacology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and became affiliated with the Mount Sinai Hospital as associate in pharmacology, and with the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research in Rahway, New Jersey, as a consultant (Antopol 1960).…”