Sommer to share insights on discovery
Ophthalmologist and epidemiologist Alfred Sommer, M.D., M.H.S., whose research demonstrated that vitamin A supplementation could significantly reduce child mortality, will deliver the next Discovery Lecture.
Alfred Sommer, M.D., M.H.S.
His talk, “What I Discovered While Discovering: A Peripatetic Adventure,” will begin at 4 p.m., on Thursday, April 21, in 208 Light Hall.
While investigating the link between vitamin A deficiency and blindness in children, Sommer and colleagues discovered that vitamin A deficiency was more common than previously thought — and that even mild deficiency can increase childhood mortality rates.
He went on to show that supplementation with an inexpensive, large dose vitamin A capsule twice a year could reduce child mortality by as much as 34 percent. Sommer won the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 1997 for this work.
Sommer is a University Distinguished Service Professor at Johns Hopkins University and Dean Emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the Institute of Medicine.
The lecture is sponsored by the Vanderbilt Eye Institute.
For a complete schedule of the Discovery Lecture series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.