Vogel and Motulsky's Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches, Edition 4

Michael Speicher · Stylianos E. Antonarakis · Arno G. Motulsky

Nov 2009 · Springer Science & Business Media

About this ebook

The ? rst edition of Human Genetics, Problems and Approaches , was published in 1970 by human geneticists Friedrich Vogel and Arno Motulsky as sole authors. The aim was broad coverage and in-depth analysis of both medical and human genetics with an emphasis on problems and approaches with occasional historical c- ments. This point of view was fully explained in an introductory chapter of the three previous editions (1970, 1976, 1997). The book acquired an excellent reputation as an advanced text of human genetics and has been translated into Italian, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and Portuguese. Our general aims for the fourth edition remain similar and together with novel developments are now set out in the Introduction of this new fourth edition. Around 2004/2005, both Friedrich Vogel and Arno Motulsky, as well as the publishers, felt that the book should be continued with a new fourth edition in the same spirit and coverage as earlier editions, but should now include additional expert authors. After some delay and the death of Friedrich Vogel in the summer of 2006, a new editorial team consisting of Michael R. Speicher of the Medical University of Graz, Austria, Stylianos E. Antonarakis of the University of Geneva Medical School, and Arno G. Motulsky of the University of Washington School of Medicine, was constituted for the fourth edition of the Vogel/Motulsky book in the spirit of the original work.

About the author

Arno Gunther Motulsky was born in Fischhausen, Germany on July 5, 1923. In 1939, he was one of more than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the German liner St. Louis who were turned away from Cuba and the United States. Before returning to Germany, four countries agreed to take one-fourth of the passengers. His family was assigned to Belgium. On May 10, 1940, the Germans invaded Belgium. Even though the family had just received United States visas, they were unable to leave. Motulsky was sent to an internment camp in France. In June 1941, he left France and traveled through Spain to Portugal, where he boarded a ship to the United States. In 1942, he passed the high school equivalency tests in Chicago. He worked and began taking college courses at Central Y.M.C.A. College. In 1943, he had been accepted to medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. However, he was drafted and the Army sent him to Yale University to finish his premedical courses. He returned to the University of Illinois for medical school, entering as a private first class. He graduated in 1947 and took further training in internal medicine and hematology. In 1951, he was called back into the Army and assigned to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he studied inherited blood disorders. He was discharged in 1953. After being discharged, he became an instructor at the University of Washington's new medical school in Seattle. He taught internal medicine and hematology. He was the founder of medical genetics and pharmacogenetics. In 1957, he started one of the first divisions of medical genetics in the United States. He was the author of more than 400 scientific articles. He and Friedrich Vogel wrote the textbook, Human Genetics: Problems and Approaches, in 1979. Motulsky died on January 17, 2018 at the age of 94.