Zvi Laron

Zvi Laron was born in 1927 in Chernivtsi

Laron was born on February 6, 1927, to a Jewish family in Chernivtsi, then part of Romania. At 6 he moved with his family to Rădăuți. During World War II he and his family were deported to camps in Transnistria, where he worked in a factory his uncle ran in Mogilev and became a licensed iron turner.

After the war he finished high school and in 1945 began medical studies in Timișoara. He was active in the Zionist student group Hasmonea and left Romania in 1947 to reach the Land of Israel. He earned his MD from the Hebrew University medical school in Jerusalem in 1952 and interned at Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

From 1954 to 1957 he trained in pediatric endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at the Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh. He returned to Israel in 1957 and led the Institute for Pediatric Endocrinology at Beilinson until 1992. He also founded a national center for juvenile diabetes and was one of the first teachers at the Tel Aviv University medical school.

In 1966 he and colleagues described a form of dwarfism with high growth hormone levels, later named Laron syndrome. He helped found international societies in his field and edited several journals. He later directed the Endocrinology and Diabetes Research Unit at Schneider Children's Medical Center and is married to Tova.