Arno Motulsky

Arno Gunther Motulsky (5 July 1923 – 17 January 2018[2]) was a professor of medical genetics and genome sciences at the University of Washington.

[10][11] As the Nazis consolidated power and adopted antisemitic laws, Arno's father Hermann, a merchant,[10] attempted to resist.

At age 15 in 1939 Arno along with his mother and younger siblings, already on a waiting list for a visa to enter US, obtained a landing permit to join his father in Cuba.

[15] The captain then asked to land in a US port with the refugees, but the US government refused them entry,[11] as did Canada and other Western Hemisphere nations.

[6][11] Motulsky briefly served as an orderly at an army hospital before enrolling in medical school at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

[4][5][11] Motulsky's first research efforts were conducted under the supervision of Karl Singer at the Michael Reese Hospital, where he investigated hemoglobinopathies.

[4][5][6][11] Subsequent work involved inherited blood disorders, which he conducted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center 1951 to 1953 during service in the U.S.

[4][16] In 1957, Motulsky demonstrated that the differential response seen in drug-induced prolonged apnea during suxamethonium anesthesia could be attributed to a pseudocholinesterase deficiency genoytpe.

[25] These were also foundational studies for Goldstein's 1985 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded with Michael Brown, “for their discoveries concerning the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.”[4] During the 1980's Motulsky collaborated with colleague Samir Deeb to investigate the genetics underlying color vision, eventually identifying common genetic polymorphisms and structural variants that influence color perception.

[5][26][27][20] During the course of his career, Motulsky mentored many postdoctoral trainees in medical genetics, including Robert Sparks, John Mulvihill, Philip J. Fialkow, Charles Epstein, Frederick Hecht, David E. Comings, Judith Goslin Hall, Gilbert S. Omenn, George Stamatoyannopoulos, George Fraser, Wylie Burke, Ephrat Levy-Lahad, and Joseph L.

[5] In 2012, Motulsky was honored in a ceremony by the US State Department for the survivors of the MS St. Louis and diplomats from countries that accepted them as refugees.