Jean Bernard, 98; Physician Pioneered Study of Blood Disease
Jean Bernard, 98, whose research on blood disease helped to found the discipline of hematology, died Monday in France, his family said. No cause of death was announced.
“Our country has lost a great doctor and a pioneering spirit,” President Jacques Chirac wrote in a letter of condolence to Bernard’s family.
Born in Paris in 1907, Bernard earned his medical degree in 1936. After the outbreak of World War II, he moved to southeastern France, where he fought in the resistance movement against German occupation. In 1943, he was captured by the Nazis.
After the war, Bernard worked at several hospitals and eventually became head of the Hematology Department at Saint Louis Hospital in Paris.
In 1961, he became the director of a research institute dedicated to leukemia and blood diseases. He later headed France’s national committee on bioethics.
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