Conversations with Laureates
Alfred Sommer received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1967 and began working at the Centers for Disease Control in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, where he began his training in epidemiology. During this time, he was assigned to the Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka (in what was then East Pakistan—Dhaka is now the capital of Bangladesh), where he first became interested in vitamin A deficiency in children. He returned to the United States after this assignment, and completed his Masters Degree in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Following this, he completed his residency in ophthalmology at the Wilmer Institute at Johns Hopkins.
In 1976, Dr. Sommer moved to Indonesia to begin his comprehensive studies of vitamin A deficiency. His landmark work on vitamin A led to numerous awards, including the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1997, the Helmut Horten Medical Research Award, and the Charles Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health.
Dr. Sommer is currently Dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He is the Immediate Past President of the Association of Schools of Public Health and the Chairman of the International Vitamin A Consultative Group (IVACG). He remains interested in vitamin A deficiency, and is involved in various field studies in South Asia, South East Asia and Africa.