John Richard Sachs

1934 - 2013
DR. JOHN RICHARD SACHS passed away on July 17, 2013.
A Brooklyn boy, he became, through hard work and a gifted intellect, a physician, a Major in the Army, a medical researcher with an international reputation, a world traveler, a devoted husband of 54 years, and a father of three.
Born in 1934, he often said that his "big chance" came when he was awarded a place at Regis High School, the highly selective Jesuit school in Manhattan. He won scholarships to Manhattan College, earning a BS degree in 1956, and Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating in 1960.
On receiving his medical degree, he embarked on his life's work – the study of the red blood cell and its components. While doing research as a post-doctorate fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, and within seven years of his graduation from medical school, he wrote and published papers in the Transactions of American Physicians and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. They were ground-breaking studies of the characteristics of the red blood cell's sodium pump. He would publish scores of papers in medical journals during his career; his first paper in the New England Journal of Medicine appeared in 1968.
After his fellowship, he was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine.
In 1966 he was drafted into the Army and was commissioned a Captain. He continued his research at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. His work there led to the treatment of soldiers in Vietnam stricken with a rare but deadly blood disease. He was promoted to Major, and was honorably discharged in 1969.
He returned to Yale and rose to the rank of associate professor in both the Department of Physiology and the Department of Medicine in the Yale University School of Medicine.
In 1975 he moved to the recently formed Stony Brook University Medical School, where he was a founding member of the Division of Hematology in the Department of Medicine. He rapidly became full professor and Head of the Division of Hematology at Stony Brook and Northport Veterans Hospital, positions he held for many years. He was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and other government and private agencies all his professional life. He also taught in the medical school, supervised resident physicians and was an attending physician in both hospitals. He continued his output of highly respected research papers, and contributed to textbooks such as The Red Blood Cell and Red Cell Membrane Transport.
He married his wife, Marilyn (nee Mahn), a graduate of The Mary Louis Academy, in 1959. She and their three children, Carolyn, John Jr. and Jennifer, and two grandchildren, survive him.
He passed away at Stony Brook University Medical Center, where he was professor emeritus.
In lieu of flowers the family suggests that donations be made to Regis High School.