Alan Weyl Bernheimer Sr. (December 9, 1913, Philadelphia – January 3, 2006, New York City) was an American microbiologist, known as a pioneer of modern bacterial toxinology.
He was often a summer investigator at Cold Spring Harbor as well as at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
[4] In 1985 Bernheimer and two colleagues published their discovery that cytotoxic phospholipases D are present in the venom of the brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa) and in cultures of Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis.
The two enzymatic toxins have different evolutionary origins but are similar in molecular weight, charge, substrate specificity, and in several biological activities.
[7] In April 1976 he gave the inaugural Stuart Mudd Lecture of the Eastern Pennsylvania Branch of the American Society for Microbiology.