| 1 | Name: | Dr. Jean D. Wilson | |
| Institution: | University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | ||
| Year Elected: | 2000 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 204. Medicine, Surgery, Pathology and Immunology | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1932 | ||
| Death Date: | June 13, 2021 | ||
Jean Wilson received an M.D. at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 1955 and joined its faculty in 1960. He served as Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism from 1988-95 and is currently Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Science and Professor of Internal Medicine. He is also a Professorial Fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the recipient of the Ernst Oppenheimer Award and the Fred Conrad Koch Award of the Endocrine Society, the Amory Prize of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Henry Dale Medal of the Society for Endocrinology and the Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and has served as president of the Association of American Physicians, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Endocrine Society. He discovered a new hormone in 1967 when he and his colleagues showed that the male sex steroid testosterone can be converted to a closely related but more potent hormone dihydrotestosterone by 5a-reductase, an enzyme predominantly located in target tissues. Through experiments in a variety of species he established a bihormonal theory of male sexual differentiation, namely that testosterone controls the development of the internal urogenital tract and that dihydrotestosterone controls the prostate gland and external genitalia. This work has had important clinical ramifications in that it made possible the elucidation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for several syndromes of abnormal sexual development and understanding of the role of dihydrotestosterone in controlling the growth of the prostate gland in man and animals. A direct consequence of these fundamental studies was the development of drugs to inhibit the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, an approach that has been applied to the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia and male pattern baldness. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2000. He died on June 13, 2021. | |||