NNP

Weiss, Benjamin

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BENJAMIN WEISS

Born in the Bronx and raised on a chicken farm in New Jersey, Ben received his undergraduate and graduate training from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (University of the Sciences), where he earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1963.  He took a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Heart Institute, National Institute of Health and was a Research Associate at Columbia University.  Since then he worked at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he held the position of Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrinology, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania, where he held the positions of Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, and Chief of the Division of Neuropsychopharmacology.  He was also a Visiting Scientist at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, Italy, and a Visiting Scientist at the Weitzman Institute in Israel. Now a retired Neuropharmacologist, Weiss currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.

During his scientific career Weiss has received several Honors and Awards, including a Gold Medal for attaining the Highest Scholastic Average of College Graduates, the Joseph W. E. Harrison Gold Medal for Excellence in Pharmacology, the Frederick William Haussman Memorial Prize, the Dobbins Scholarship, Rexall Award, Borden Award, the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, a MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, a Research Medal awarded by the University of Milan, Milan, Italy, and an Outstanding Scientist Award from the China Bureau of Foreign Experts Affairs, Suzhou, China. He was also named by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the Top One Thousand Most Quoted Contemporary Scientists in the World.  One of his publications was listed in Science Citation Index as One of the 300 Most-Cited Publications between 1961 and 1976.  Overall, his scientific papers have been cited on a list compiled by Google Scholars as having more than ten thousand citations.

Dr. Weiss has edited two books and has published over 150 scientific articles on his research in the fields of Molecular Biology and Molecular Pharmacology.  He also holds three patents on the use of antisense oligonucleotides in the treatment of diseases.  He has been an invited speaker at most of the major universities and research institutions in the United States and at dozens of national and international conferences, which has afforded him the opportunity of visiting some of the greatest museum collections of medals in the world.  These included a number of fine collections of medals not normally on public display, such as the wonderful collection of medals compiled by George III of England at the British Museum, London, the entire Kress Collection of Renaissance Medals at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Vernon Hall Collection of European Medals, the Hunterian Collection at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the collection of Italian Baroque medals at the Galleria Estense, Modena, Italy.

2008

Medallic History of Religious and Racial Intolerance: Medals as Instruments fro Promoting Bigotry

Prejudices of all types represent a profound failure and blight on our society. These prejudices manifest themselves in individuals and nations having policies which, overtly or covertly, subtly or blatantly, discriminate on the basis of religion, race, nationality, gender, age or sexual orientation---religious and racial prejudices being among the most commonly encountered. This article traces the repercussions of religious and racial intolerance through the eyes of historical and commemorative medals. A group of medals has been selected that serve to illustrate, through imagery and wonderful art, that medals not only have provided a window through which to view historical events surrounding bigotry but also have been issued to actually promote religious and racial hatred.

2012

Medallic History of the War of 1812

Extracted from The MCA Advisory, vol. 15, no. 5, September-October 2012.

2015

Anti-Semitic Bigotry as Chronicled by Historical Medals

Parts 1-3, originally published in The Shekel, vol. 48, nos. 1-3 (January-September), 2015.

2015

Anti-Semitic Bigotry: A Retrospective As Chronicled By Historical Medals

History of antisemitism, primarily in Europe and America, as illustrated by historical medals.

2016

How A German Became King of England: A Medallic History of Religious Conflicts in Britain

Originally published in two parts, in The MCA Advisory, vol. 19, nos. 2-3 (April-June), 2016.

2017

Medal Commemorating the Visit of Sultan Abdul Aziz to London, Revisited

Extract from The MCA Advisory, vol. 20, no. 2 (March-April), 2017.

2020

Medallic History of Slavery: Racial Oppression as Chronicled by Historical and Commemorative Medals

During the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, millions of black men, women and children were captured in their ancestral homelands, often deep in the interior of sub-Saharan Africa, forcibly marched to West-African coastal embarkation points, chained inside the hold of a cargo ship, transported thousands of miles away to a foreign land where they did not even know the language, and then, frequently separated from their families, were sold like cattle and kept enslaved for the remainder of their lives. What follows is a brief account of this period, using historical and commemorative medals to illustrate this sordid epoch.