The Stefan S. Fajans papers are comprised of personal correspondence with his family while in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II as well as a wide range of materials documenting his professional life. The latter are a rich source for his research on Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY) and its associated genetic markers. The Stefan S. Fajans papers are divided into two series: Personal Correspondence and Professional Files.
Stefan S. Fajans was born on March 15, 1918 in Munich, Germany, and immigrated to Ann Arbor, Michigan with his family at the age of 18 when his father, Kasimir, a physical chemist and pioneer in the science of radioactivity, joined the faculty of the University of Michigan. He became a naturalized citizen in 1942. In 1947, he married Ruth Stine, a biochemist and University of Michigan alumna, at her parent's home in Washington D.C. Their marriage lasted 64 years, until she passed away at the age of 89. They had two sons, Peter (Daniar) and John (Luanne), and three grandchildren.
Dr. Fajans received his Bachelor of Science in chemistry in 1938 from the University of Michigan. He entered medical school at the University of Michigan that same year. After taking an elective in endocrinology that was taught by Dr. Jerome Conn, he became interested in endocrinology and, more specifically, in the control of carbohydrate metabolism. He earned his Doctor of Medicine in 1942.
In 1943, after completing an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, he was drafted into the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II. He was a member of the 41st Evacuation Hospital, which was the first to arrive on Omaha Beach, three days after the Normandy invasion.
Following the end of the war, Dr. Fajans returned to the University of Michigan where he completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in endocrinology under Dr. Conn. Dr. Fajans joined the University of Michigan faculty as an instructor in 1949; he was promoted to assistant professor in 1951, associate professor in 1955, and professor in 1961.
Dr. Fajans is well known for his research on diabetes, making "novel contributions to the knowledge that diabetes was not a single disease, but consisted of several subtypes with different causes". In 1958, Dr. Fajans began studying a Michigan family, the "R-W pedigree," with more than 360 members spanning seven generations, 76 of whom had a form of non-insulin-dependent diabetes. However, the disease "appeared unusually early in this family -- diagnosed in children and adolescents, unlike the usual onset of type 2 diabetes after age 40" . As a result of this research, he was the first to describe a subtype of type 2 diabetes, Maturity-Onset Diabetes of the Young (MODY). During the late 1980s, Dr. Fajans began collaborating with Dr. Graeme Bell at the University of Chicago, co-publishing the first paper to describe a genetic marker of MODY and the gene itself.
Throughout his career, Dr. Fajans received many awards and honors. In 1973, he was named Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, and in 1977 he became the first director of the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center, having been instrumental in its establishment. He was president of the American Diabetes Association, 1971--1972, and vice president of the Endocrine Society the preceding year. He gave the Banting Memorial Lecture --the highest award bestowed by the Diabetes UK, the United Kingdom's leading diabetes charity-- in the USA, Canada, and Great Britain. He was the University of Michigan's Henry Russell Lecturer in 1983, and was named a Master Fellow of the American College of Physicians in 1984 and a Senior Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1985. The Stefan S. Fajans/Glaxo Smith Klein Professorship in Diabetes was established in 2003 and the annual Stefan S. Fajans Lectureship in Diabetes in 2010 to pay tribute to his accomplishments.
Dr. Fajans continued his research program on MODY even after his official retirement in 1988. He remained Professor Emeritus of Internal Medicine until his death on June 22, 2014.
