Donald Zilversmit

Zilversmit was born in Hengelo, Netherlands, the son of Herman and Elizabeth (DeWinter) Zilversmit. He began studies at Utrecht University but escaped before the German invasion in World War II. He came to the United States in 1939 to finish his studies at the University of California, Berkeley (B.S., 1940, Ph.D. 1948).^[1] He joined a Dutch brigade during the war. ^[2]

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He married Kitty Fonteyn in 1945. She wrote of her time in hiding and their separation during the Nazi occupation in Yours Always, A Holocaust Love Story. They have three daughters. ^[2]

He was on the faculty of the University of Tennessee Medical College from 1948 to 1966. He received a Career Investigator Award from the American Heart Association in 1959. Zilversmit joined the faculty at Cornell in 1966 and remained until retirement in 1990.^[1]

He was awarded an honorary degree from Utrecht University in 1980 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989.^[1]

Zilversmit has over 300 publications and has made major contributions to the understanding of the relationship between diet and cardiovascular disease. He has greatly contributed to the understanding of atherogenesis, including basic mechanisms in lipid transport and exchange. He also pioneered the development of mathematical analysis for the interpretation of kinetic data.^[1]

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