Samuel I. Rapaport-American Society of Hematology

In 1952, Samuel I. Rapaport, MD, while working at the Long Beach Veterans Administration Hospital, was introduced to Norwegian physician Paul Owren. Dr. Owren was giving a lecture on new developments in the blood coagulation field. During his visit, Dr. Owren mentioned to Dr. Rapaport that there was a Fulbright Research Scholarship in Medicine available in Norway, and, impressed with his interest in blood coagulation, he urged Dr. Rapaport to apply for it. After talking with his wife, Joyce, and after giving her several reasons why he shouldn't apply, she was persistent in urging him to submit an application. He relented, but he did so with the proviso that she type the application.

These events were the beginning of an illustrious research career in blood coagulation spanning four and a half decades that resulted in key discoveries, including the discovery that factor VII existed in plasma in two forms: VII and VIIa, the development of the activated partial thromboplastin time, the importance of a trace of thrombin to activate factor V...

Read the full article written by Donald I. Feinstein, MD, MACP, in the September/October 2008 issue of The Hematologist.

We encourage you to honor Dr. Rapaport by sharing your thoughts or stories through the Legends in Hematology Guestbook or by making a special gift to ASH.


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Dr. Rapaport is not only a great mentor and an excellent teacher but also a "first-class" human being. His greatest strength was to make novel and important discoveries in blood coagulation with plain and simple experiments. I agree with Dr. Feinstein that writing scientific papers with Dr. Rapaport was "painful" as he always aims for excellence in whatever he does!

– L. Vijaya Mohan Rao, PhD

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