Elvin A. Kabat (1914–2000)

Elvin A. Kabat was born in New York City to immigrant parents from Eastern Europe (original name Kabatchnick). He entered high school at age 12, and graduated in three years. He then enrolled at City College of New York, where he earned a degree in chemistry at age 18 in 1932. The following year, he began working in Michael Heidelberger's laboratory at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. He worked on his Ph.D. in the Department of Biochemistry by taking night courses, and completed his degree in only four years. With a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, in 1937 Kabat did research on immunoglobulin G (IgG) with Arne Tiselius and Kai Pederson at Uppsala University in Sweden. In 1938, he returned to New York City to become an instructor of pathology at Cornell University Medical College. Kabat spent the majority of his career as a faculty member at Columbia P&S, first in the Department of Biochemistry in 1941, then in the Department of Bacteriology. He became an associate professor in 1948, and a full professor in the newly renamed Department of Microbiology in 1952. In the 1950s, the government terminated his grants as a fallout of the politics of the McCarthy era. However, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation continued to support him. He was named the Higgins Professor of Microbiology in 1983, and became professor emeritus in 1985. He published more than 470 scholarly articles and many textbooks over 65 years. He was the first to demonstrate that antibodies are gamma globulins. He developed an immuno-diagnostic test for multiple sclerosis, and was among the first to develop an animal model of this autoimmune disease. These studies opened the way to modern experimental autoimmunity, with its promise of major benefit to patients with autoimmune diseases. After being selected by the National Institutes of Health as a Fogarty Scholar in 1974-1975, Kabat split his time between NIH and Columbia University for the rest of his career. Kabat was married in 1942 to Sally Lennick, a Canadian art student, with whom he had three children. Since 2001, the families of Michael Heidelberger and Elvin Kabat have worked with Columbia University's Department of Microbiology and Immunology to organize the Heidelberger-Kabat Distinguished Lecture in Immunology.