The Society Pages
Aaron J. Marcus, MD
(1925-2015)
Aaron J. Marcus, MD, a mentor and pioneering scientist in hemostasis, coagulation,
thrombosis, and vascular biology for 52 years,
passed away on May 6, 2015.
Even at 89, he remained active in hematology research, directing experiments from his bedside to the very end. As a scientific
investigator, Dr. Marcus was notable not only for his sheer longevity – he was the longest continuously funded NIH grantee and
garnered a new 10-year National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
MERIT award at age 80 – but also for his unquenchable curiosity.
“He lived and breathed hemostasis,” recalled Ralph L. Nachman,
MD, a colleague and past chairman and professor of medicine at
Weill Cornell Medical College. “He was on a constant search for
new therapeutic agents designed to combat human thrombotic
disease.”
Dr. Marcus obtained his MD from New York Medical College in
1953 and spent his residency and a research fellowship in hematology at Montefiore Hospital.
Since the publication of his first paper in 1958, Dr. Marcus
spent his entire professional career pursuing the mysteries of
thrombosis. The role of platelet lipids in thrombosis remained the
focus of his research for several decades, and he was among the
first to demonstrate how platelets were affected by aspirin. He
also invented the partial thromboplastin time (PTT) test, which is
still used widely for evaluating blood coagulation in patients.
These studies took place in a narrow, instrument-crammed lab
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