Alan F Hofmann

1931 - 2021
Alan F. Hofmann, age 90, of La Jolla, CA, died at home on September 7, 2021. Like previous physiologists, he sought to understand how the human body works and what goes wrong in disease. To this end he brought medical education, curiosity, energy, and a love of chemistry as applied to biology. His objects of study were bile acids, the major constituents of bile and the chemical form in which cholesterol is eliminated from the body. His experiments ranged from the study of model systems simulating bile to randomized clinical studies.
Alan Hofmann was born in blue collar Baltimore. His father started work aged 12 because of extreme poverty. Hofmann attended Johns Hopkins University on scholarship, which also generously provided his medical education. Summers were spent driving an ice cream truck. His medical residency was at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York. During this time he obtained a ship's Surgeon license, working on a Panama Line vessel. A project at the National Heart Institute aroused his curiosity as to how insoluble lipids such as olive oil could be absorbed. In 1959, Hofmann joined the National Symphony as physician during a goodwill Pan American tour. While in Peru, he learned that the National Foundation had funded him for a 3-year stint with Bengt Borgström at the University of Lund, Sweden. Together they studied model systems, worked out principles of micellar solubilization, intubating healthy subjects to collect small intestinal content and isolate a micellar phase. He returned to Rockefeller University, where he described intestinal cholesterol excretion.
He married a Swedish technician and fathered two daughters. The Mayo Clinic offered him a position whose only obligation was to direct research. Working with Leslie Schoenfield he found that that feeding a particular bile acid, chenodiol, lowered the cholesterol concentration of bile and induced gradual dissolution of gallstones.
Hofmann joined the faculty of the University of California San Diego in 1977, establishing a laboratory blending chemistry and biology. Here he characterized many aspects of bile acid metabolism in experimental animals and human subjects.
Bile acids emerged from these studies as the body's digestants and laxatives, regulating genes and modulating metabolism. His work facilitated development of bile acid-based drugs, with obeticholic acid now marketed for primary biliary cholangitis.
Hofmann received many honors for his work, including an honorary degree from the University of Bologna, the Herbert Falk medal, the Thannhauser medal, and Distinguished Achievement awards from his professional societies, as well as the Mayo Clinic and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
He greatly inspired innumerable scientific colleagues with his enthusiasm, intellect, knowledge, mentoring and friendship. They became a global family who insisted this enormous, influential aspect of his career was added to his self-penned obituary.
Hofmann is survived by his second wife, Heli, a Bavarian, whom he married in 1978; two daughters from his first marriage, Anthea Phillips and Cecilia McKenzie; five grandchildren and two stepdaughters. Contributions in his honor should be made to the Multiple System Atrophy Coalition. Condolences may be sent to HeliHofmann@gmail.com