ARLEEN RIFKIND

RIFKIND--Arleen B., died peacefully at her home on April 2 after a brief illness. The daughter of Michael and Regina Brenner, Arleen was born in New York City in 1938. She attended Hunter College Elementary and High School and in 1960 graduated from Bryn Mawr College where she majored in philosophy. She then enrolled in NYU Medical School where she received her MD in 1964 followed by a residency in internal medicine at Bellevue Hospital. While at medical school, Arleen married Robert S. Rifkind, and they remained devoted to each other for the ensuing 59 years. In 1965, the couple moved to Washington, DC where Arleen spent three years as a Clinical Associate in the NIH Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. There she began a long research career during which she authored or co-authored more than 80 articles on research findings published in scientific journals, most significantly on dioxin toxicity. Returning to New York, she went to work at the Rockefeller Institute and then joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she became a professor in the Pharmacology Department in 1983, a position she held until her death. She served as chairman of Weill Cornell's General Faculty Council, led several NIH study sections and advisory boards and served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals. Arleen is survived by her husband, by their daughters and sons-in-law Amy Rifkind (Bruce Brown) of Washington, DC and Nina Rifkind (Marc Lerner) of Oxford, MS, by her sister Diane Brenner of Worthington, MA, and by five grandchildren (Rebecca, Sam, Shoshana, David and Lily) who were a special source of joy to her. In addition to her family and her laboratory, she found great pleasure in classical chamber music and the piano, which she played throughout her life, and in her garden in Wainscott, Long Island.