Anthony August Albanese was born on February 12, 1908, in New York City, the son of Agostino and Elettrina Imburgia Albanese. He attended Harrison, New York, public schools and graduated with a B.S. degree from New York University in 1930. From 1930 to 1932, he was an American-Hungarian Exchange Fellow at the University of Budapest. On his return, he became a research assistant in the Department of Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. On November 29, 1933, he married Julette O'Rorke at St. Gregory's Church in Harrison. It was the beginning of a companionship that was to last for 51 years, until Mrs. Albanese's death in 1984.

He was awarded a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Columbia University in 1940 and then spent a year as research associate in the Division of Chemistry at the National Institute of Health on a Corn Industries Fellowship. From 1941 until 1945, he was an Associate in Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and then Assistant Professor of Pediatric Biochemistry at the New York University College of Medicine, where he advanced to Associate Professor in 1948. During the years of involvement of the United States in World War II, he held an honorary position as Responsible Investigator of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, followed by his appointment, until 1972, as Responsible Investigator for the Office of Naval Research and also, from 1960 to 1965, for the Air Research and Development Command.

In 1949, Professor Albanese became Chief of the Nutritional Research Laboratory and of the Clinical Laboratory of St. Luke's Convalescent Hospital and from 1959 to 1974, Director of the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Division and the Clinical Laboratory of the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, New York. From 1950 to 1980, he also served as Director of Geriatric Nutrition and of the Clinical Laboratory of the Miriam Osborn Memorial Home in Rye, New York.

Dr. Albanese's earliest publications were related to nutrition. A paper taken from his 1940 dissertation discussed an electrolytic method for the determination of basic amino acids in protein. According to the author, it permitted the simple and accurate determination of the basic amino acids in small amounts of protein. The term "simple" would not be apparent to biochemists of our time, but it was certainly an improvement over the available methods. This paper was an important milestone in his scientific career. First, it turned his attention to amino acids; second, he chose the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) as the vehicle for publication, and third, it underlined his special interest in methodology. By the end of his career, he had published 93 papers in JBC, three-quarters of them in the space of 20 years. From that time on, essentially all his publications were in nutritional biochemistry or some other branch of the nutritional sciences.

Having moved to the Department of Pediatric Biochemistry of Johns Hopkins University, and in cooperation with Emmett Holt, Albanese now delved into the nutritional aspects of amino acids. The first report, with Holt as first author, established that it was not possible for four normal adult males to maintain nitrogen balance when subsisting on a diet very low in tryptophan and that tryptophan was therefore a dietary essential for the human species. A similar experiment was then undertaken with lysine, with comparable results. Adding one female volunteer to the group of four male subjects provided some additional interesting information: it demonstrated the suppressive effect of the lysine deficiency on menstruation, including the absence of premenstrual distress usually experienced by the subject. These experiments were followed by several which demonstrated the pathological effects of amino acid deficiencies. He also published further papers on methodologya color test for tryptophan in protein hydrolysates, preparation of methionine and tryptophan-free hydrolysates, and a method for the determination of urinary amino nitrogen. Albanese, in cooperation with Virginia Irby, found that a diet for rats, which provided the nitrogenous moiety at the ratios of essential amino acids found in casein, was inferior to a diet based on intact casein or hydrolyzed casein. The authors suggested that this may have been due, at least in part, to toxic effects of unnatural forms of some amino acids that could not be utilized by the rats.

During the five years Albanese spent at Johns Hopkins, he published 36 papers, 11 of which were concerned with methodology and the remainder all directly or indirectly with the subject of amino acid nutrition. It is interesting that despite his position as Associate in Pediatrics, his work was of a general nutritional and biochemical nature, and not specifically centered on pediatric problems.

After his move to the

New York University Hospital as Assistant Professor of Pediatric Biochemistry, he published, in 1947, his first review paper, a 42-page discussion of the amino acid requirements of humans. In the introduction to the review, Albanese mentioned that in the past the nitrogen requirements of humans had been stated mostly in terms of whole protein, but that now, with increased knowledge of the composition of proteins, requirement data for specific amino acids had become available. This knowledge made it possible to consider not only the essentiality of certain amino acids and species differences, but also differences within a given species, taking into account the differing needs for maintenance, growth and reproduction. He then discussed in detail the use of nitrogen balance as a tool to determine amino acid requirements. He followed this with a review of the existing knowledge at different stages of life: the most detailed is the part in which he discussed the requirements during the first year of life. There being relatively little experimental work in this specialty, he relied largely on calculations based on the analyses of human and other milks. The review listed 154 references. Considering the effort needed for this review and the volume of research published during that period, one must assume that Albanese had few or no teaching duties at that time. At the end of the review, Albanese expresses his thanks to Professor Emmett Holt, Jr., for invaluable suggestions in the preparation of the manuscript. From a biographical point of view, Albanese's emphasis on the first year of life is of special interest, as is the change of direction towards pediatric problems in his research effort. Many of the research papers published during Albanese's tenure at New York University carry the name of Dr. Snyderman, an expert on amino acid nutrition of young children and known for her work on juvenile phenylketonuria. The studies covered the requirements of infants for tryptophan, isoleucine, phenylalanine and the sulfur-containing amino acids, as well as the nutritional evaluation of various proteins and protein hydrolysates for infants. The thiamine and riboflavin requirements for infants were also studied.

In 1950, a volume on protein and amino acid requirements of mammals was published by Academic Press. It was edited by Albanese and also contained a chapter written by him, on the protein and amino acid requirements of humans. Despite the similarity of the titles of this and his 1947 book chapter, there are some basic differences between the two chapters. The earlier review discussed methodology and the requirements of humans only, while the newer chapter covers species differences and short reviews of work done with growing and adult rats, young mice, chicks and dogs and a comparison of the amino acid requirements of the rat with those of humans. This caused a modest amount of overlap with a chapter written by H. H. Mitchell in the same volume. Albanese discussed in depth the influence of the nutritional state on N-requirements as well as that of calories on N-equilibrium and amino acid requirements, and the influence of vitamins on N-metabolism. With this publication, Albanese joined the ranks of the editors, an activity on which he seems to have spent considerable effort in the following years.

In 1949, Albanese left New York University and for the next 10 years was Chief of the Nutritional Research Laboratory and of the Clinical Laboratory of St. Luke's Convalescent Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut. This changed the direction of his research activities. In 1951, he presented a paper on the metabolic aspects of steroid therapy in rheumatic disease of children at the meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, but he also discussed, in the same year, the protein requirement in old age at a Gordon Conference. Old age and the needs of convalescents were becoming increasingly important to him. The topics of his papers were no longer restricted to proteins and amino acids, but also included such subjects as the effect of age on the utilization of carbohydrates, the effect of salicylates on vitamin C stores of rheumatic fever patients, the management of the malnutrition of convalescence, and factors influencing the cholesterol levels of adults. However, the bulk of the publications and presentations were still in the fields of protein and amino acids. In 1956, there was some emphasis on lysine, including the consideration of lysine supplementation in infant feeding and the lysine needs in nutritional stress, especially among the aged. Although there were still papers on pediatric nutritional concerns, the new emphasis was on the elderly and on convalescents. In the early fifties, two new names appeared on several of the publications, namely those of Dr. Louise Orto and Dr. Reginald A. Higgons. Orto was to work in close collaboration with Albanese for the next 20 years.

In 1959, Albanese edited a volume on protein and amino acid nutrition to which he supplied an eight-page "Introduction and Perspectives," and two chapters, one on criteria of protein nutrition, and one on the protein and amino acid requirements of children. In addition to a short overview of the role of vitamins in amino acid metabolism, the introduction includes a discussion of the effect of some therapeutic agents, such as antibiotics, steroids, hypoglycemic agents and some other drugs on protein and amino acid nutrition. The chapter on criteria of protein nutrition not only discusses the usefulness of anthropometry, blood proteins and nitrogen balance as criteria, but also creatinine excretion, plasma amino nitrogen and urinary amino acids and several other criteria, once again underlining Albanese's interest and extensive knowledge of the methodology of nutritional biochemistry. The bulk of the chapter on the requirements of children discusses the amino acids and protein needs during the first year of life, with those during preadolescence and adolescence getting less detailed treatment. This volume of 16 chapters by well-known nutritionists shows the hand of a seasoned editor.

In 1960, Albanese traveled to Japan, where he lectured on recent observations on protein and amino acid nutrition of infants and children at the Medical Schools of the University of Tokyo and Osaka University. Editorial work also appears to have taken up more and more of his time, as well as entries in encyclopedias and textbooks. A major effort was the editorship of the series Newer Methods of Nutritional Biochemistry, published by Academic Press, with the first volume appearing in 1963. Travels and attendance at congresses brought him into increased personal contact with scientists from outside the United States. Three of the 11 chapters in the first volume were composed by scientists from other countriesin this case, from Japan and Brazil. Volume 5 (1972) was a truly international effort: of the seven contributions, six were authored by scientists from Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy and Turkey. In the first and third volumes (1963 and 1967), Albanese also contributed chapters. In the other three volumes, he restricted himself to prefaces and epilogues. In 1964, Albanese and Orto contributed a chapter on proteins and amino acids to the third edition of the textbook Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, edited by Wohl and Goodhart, again in 1968 to the fourth edition and in 1973 to the fifth edition, this time edited by Goodhart and Shils. The latter is a thorough treatment, for a textbook of this type, on the subject: it has 68 pages, containing many tables and graphs and 300 references.

From 1960 to 1969, Albanese contributed, in addition to the book chapters mentioned, 10 papers, including editorials, to the New York State Journal of Medicine (NYSJM). Of his talks, the bulk were now on problems of the aged and on anabolic agents and steroids. In fact, six of the papers in the NYSJM were titled "Newer Steroids" I to VI. Ten of the talks were also on this subject. Others were on the problems of individuality of nutritional requirements, on parenteral feeding, the metabolism of amino acids and fats, nitrogen balance, blood cholesterol of the elderly, lipemia, and nutrition and physical exercise. Apparently, Albanese's interests had become broader with time, covering many different nutritional subjects, frequently with special treatment for techniques and methodology.

At the end of this period, a new subject became of special interestbone loss. In 1969, he gave two talks at conferences on the subject and published a paper on the quantitative radiographic survey technique for detection of bone loss in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The paper indicates that he had experimented with exploratory measurements as early as 1963. He gives data on his preliminary radiographic bone density measurements of a finger phalanx of 369 males and 666 females, which indicated that subnormal bone density of "healthy normal subjects" was more prevalent than heretofore realized.

Starting with 1970, Albanese used a new medium for his publications: Nutrition Reports International (NRI), of which he was the Editor-in-Chief. On one paper carrying his name, the first author was Julette O'Rorke Albanese, M.S. This was the name of Mrs. Albanese, who had been a school teacher and who died (after lengthy hospitalization from the consequences of a stroke) in the same year the paper was published. Perhaps Albanese, who was greatly affected by her death, published the paper, based on data collected at an earlier time, as a memorial to her. The paper indicated that there was a positive connection between obesity and poor scholarship, and thought that a degree of improvement of scholastic achievement could be obtained by the correction of dietary measures. In 1988, he handed the editorial reins to Steven H. Zeisel. Albanese continued to attend conferences and symposia, at which he presented papers or exhibits, although not as frequently as in earlier years, and he wrote short reviews on a variety of subjects for industrially connected publications, such as Food and Nutrition News, Contemporary Nutrition and Nutrition News. In the early seventies, he still seemed to be greatly interested in the effect of steroids on nutrition and metabolism, but also wrote and spoke about the effect of cigarette smoking, and on more than one occasion, of physical exercise. However, after 1972 his main interest was bone loss with aging, and methods to detect it, which included osteoporosis, various aspects of calcium nutrition and the prevention of bone loss after menopause not only with minerals, but also with estrogen therapy. During this time, he also authored two books as volume I and III of a series, Current Topics in Nutrition and Disease, of which he and David Kritchevsky were the editors. The first, which Albanese called a monograph, describes in over 200 pages the causes, detection and therapy of bone loss. It appeared in 1977 and is dedicated to his wife. The second, volume III of the series, appeared in 1980. It is a detailed work on the existing knowledge on nutrition for the elderly. He first discussed the role of the aged in society, then the physiological and clinical factors of aging, followed by chapters on the individual nutrients, and closed with a discussion of drug and nutrition interaction. While the book is dedicated to "R. Eugene Curry, Esteemed Friend and Mentor," it is also a memorial to Albanese's life of research and especially, in later years, of spreading nutritional information to the medical profession and to the educated lay public.

Albanese held memberships in the American Institute of Nutrition, the American Chemical Society, the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, the American Medical Association, the American Therapeutic Society, the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the Society of Sigma Xi and was a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists.

After studying his publications and talks, one can write with ease about Albanese the scientist. It is much more difficult to do this about Albanese the man. The Albaneses obviously liked to travel. A survey of his talks and his participation in international meetings attests to this. He seems to have been an intensely private person, not unkind or unfriendly, but difficult to get to know on a personal basis. However, the fact that he frequently published with coauthors, and repeatedly with the same persons, indicates that on this level he was cooperative and an agreeable partner in research. While the Albaneses had no children, both he and his wife had siblings. They must have preceded him in death, because they are not mentioned as survivors in his obituary. He died on June 12, 1994 in the Greenwich, Connecticut Hospital, at the age of 86.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS