ABSTRACT
THOMAS BERNARD FITZPATRICK was born in Madison, Wisconsin on December 19, 1919, an early Christmas present to his family and to all of Dermatology. After his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin he went on to get his M.D. at Harvard. He then collaborated with Aaron Lerner at the Army Chemical Center in Maryland where they were the first to demonstrate that tyrosinase is in human skin and that it converted tyrosine into melanin. This was followed by a residency in dermatology at the Mayo Clinic, where he also earned a Ph.D. He again joined Lerner who was now at the University of Michigan. The following year he was invited to head the Department of Dermatology at the University of Oregon. In 1958 on a sabbatical at Oxford in England he first isolated and named the melanosome. His triumphant return was to Harvard in 1959 as Department Head and Professor. There his passion with pigment led to the classic description of early melanoma. This recognition with Wallace Clark of its unique variegated color pattern and irregular border resulted in detection and excision of melanomas before fatal metastatic spread had occurred.
