Rachel Schneerson

Rachel Schneerson was born in 1932 in Warsaw

Rachel Schneerson was born on April 25, 1932, in Warsaw, Poland. She came from the Schneerson family, descendants of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. Her father was a grandson of Rabbi Shmaryahu Noah Schneerson, the Kapust Chabad rebbe in Bobruisk.

She earned her medical degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1958. She trained at Tel Hashomer hospital and in pediatrics at Hillel Yaffe hospital in Hadera. In 1966 she was certified in pediatrics and became a senior pediatrician at Tel Hashomer.

In 1969 she moved to the United States to teach at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where she met John B. Robbins. The two joined the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 1970 and moved to the Food and Drug Administration in 1974. In 1983 they returned to the institute to head the Laboratory of Developmental and Molecular Immunity.

With Robbins she showed that the sugar from the surface of the Hib bacteria could produce immunity. Because this did not protect infants, they linked the sugar to a protein carrier, creating a conjugate vaccine that gave infants high antibody levels.

She received the 1996 Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research with Robbins. She retired from federal service in July 2012.