Ernest Geiger
Born in 1876.
Died in 1965.
Ernst Geiger stands out for a scientific career linking European experimental pharmacology with questions of nutritional biochemistry in the United States, through research and teaching posts in Graz, Pécs and, later, at the University of Southern California. Initially trained in medicine at the University of Graz, he defended and received his doctorate there on 30 April 1921. After settling in the United States, he supplemented his university education with a Ph.D.
from the University of Southern California, awarded in 1947.
His European work attests to expertise in experimental pharmacology: among his contributions were a 1922 study on the effect of strophanthin on the frog heart and, in 1925, an investigation with G. Mansfeld into the mechanism of action of insulin. During his years in Graz, he worked professionally with Adolf Jarisch junior at the Pharmakologischen Institut.
He subsequently joined the Pharmakologischen Institut of the Royal Hungarian Elisabeth University in Pécs under the direction of Geza Mansfeld, where he completed his habilitation and received successive academic appointments: assistant professor in 1934 and außerordentlicher Professor in 1936. The institutional context of Pécs is documented through the later fate of Geza Mansfeld, who was deported in 1944 on racial grounds and returned after the war, thereby clarifying the scientific environment in which Geiger worked.
The documentation also records a conversion to Unitarianism in 1938, mentioned as an addition to the marriage certificate.
Fleeing Europe in 1939, Ernst Geiger arrived in New York aboard the SS Paris on 4 January 1939; after a stay in Toronto, he entered the United States via Buffalo in March 1939, and his family (Lilly and their son) likewise emigrated in March 1939, briefly passing through Chicago before settling in California.
In the United States, he taught for more than eleven years in the Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition at the USC Medical School, while also holding industrial responsibilities as research director at Van Camp Seafood Co., Terminal Island (California). His work focused on protein metabolism and its role in nutrition, resulting in notable publications in the United States—including a 1950 article in Science on protein synthesis and, in 1958, a contribution to The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on the possible use of plankton for human nutrition.