After working for a while as a peddler, Abraham earned enough money to open his own general store. He learned English quickly and even mastered the rural Wisconsin accent, which helped him connect with his clients. A housewife, Celia maintained her thick Yiddish accent.
A childhood accident involving a mill at Celia’s family farm had dislocated her left hand, rendering her thumb and forefinger useless. “Sometimes at age 5,” Dr. Rosenberg wrote in his memoir, “holding his left hand in both of my hands, I told him I wanted to be a doctor so I could repair his hand.”
Leon was an exemplary student: he was his high school valedictorian and finished summa cum laude at the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated in 1954 and received his medical degree in 1957. He interned at New York-Presbyterian Hospital before moving on to the National Institutes. As a research fellow of Health in 1959.
His first marriage to Elaine Lewis ended in divorce. with his wife, his brother, Irvine, former dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University; their sons, Robert Rosenberg and David Corrish; their daughters, Diana Clark and Alexa Rosenberg; six grandchildren; And a great-grandson.
While at Yale, Dr. Rosenberg led research into inherited metabolic disorders, despite colleagues’ skepticism about the basis for such work. “Don’t be fooled,” he recalled to a Yale nephrologist. “Nothing like that.”
Dr. Rosenberg proved him wrong. He filled the lectures with case studies of children – Steven, of course, followed by Dana, Lorraine, Robbie, and others – who presented inexplicable disorders, which he repeatedly showed was their body’s inability to metabolize the various acids. and which can often be easily treated.
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