[1] His early work with arriving immigrants at Ellis Island made him a standout investigator for detecting infectious diseases and he became a well-known epidemiologist.

After completing his secondary education, Goldberger entered the City College of New York intending to pursue an engineering career.

[citation needed] In 1909, Goldberger published his research on an acarine mite-based parasitic infection common among poor, inner-city populations.

Some physicians at the time believed that the disease arose in consequence of bad genes, airborne germs, or miasma resulting from poor sanitary conditions.

Goldberger, in contrast, suspected that diet was the true cause, which he came to believe through his observation that hospital staff who worked closely with pellagra patients did not fall sick themselves.

With federal funding, he switched them to a more varied diet that included fresh meat, vegetables, milk, and eggs.

Unfortunately, after the study, the funding for more nutritious food dried up and the pellagra rates in the orphanages and asylum returned to pre-study levels.

[1] Despite his careful experiments, Goldberger's discovery proved socially and politically unacceptable, and he made little progress in gaining support for the treatment of pellagra.

Besides the popularity of the germ theory, opposition also came from Southern leaders who resented a Northerner claiming that the pellagra outbreak was a product of the region's widespread poverty.

[1] Though Goldberger established a clear link between pellagra and diet, he never discovered the specific nutrient deficiency that caused it.

[1] It was not until 1937 that Conrad Elvehjem discovered that pellagra is caused by a dietary lack of the B vitamin niacin, along with reduced levels of the essential amino acid tryptophan.

[9] In 1940, John Nesbitt produced a short film about Goldberger titled A Way in the Wilderness, directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Shepperd Strudwick.

[10] The story of Goldberger's research on pellagra was featured in the 2008 Michael Mosley BBC Four documentary mini-series Medical Mavericks: The History of Self-Experimentation[11] and on a 2012 episode of the Science Channel TV show, Dark Matters: Twisted But True.

[12] The radio program Cavalcade of America in 1940 had an episode called "The Red Death" about Goldberger's research on pellagra starring Ray Collins and Agnes Moorehead.