Joseph Edward Rall

Joseph Edward Rall (February 3, 1920 – February 28, 2008)

radioactive iodine

.

Early life and education

Rall was born in 1920 in

thyroxine.^[2]

Career

In 1950, Rall relocated to

hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands.^[1]^[2] He also begun a lifelong collaboration with Jacob Robbins,^[3] with whom he studied thyroid proteins including thyroglobulin,^[2] and established the "free thyroxine hypothesis", which holds that thyroxine is only active when not bound to protein.^[4]

Rall was recruited by the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, to run a new laboratory, the Clinical Endocrinology Branch (CEB), at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases. The branch initially focused on thyroid physiology and diseases, but later expanded to encompass diabetes as well as disorders of growth hormone and the gonads. Under Rall, the CEB hosted many visiting international scientists and had a longstanding association with the laboratory run by Nino Salvatore in Italy.^[3] In 1962, Rall was appointed Director of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. He served as Deputy Director for Intramural Research for NIH in 1983 until his retirement in 1990.^[1]

Rall was elected to the U.S.

University of Naples (Italy) and Charles University (Czech Republic). He was president of the American Thyroid Association (ATA) in 1964 and received distinguished service awards from the ATA and the Endocrine Society.^[2]