Professor Zvi Laron

Professor Zvi Laron has been awarded The 2009 Israel Prize for Medical Research, the country's highest honor, for his groundbreaking research on growth hormone activity. It was in 1966, during his tenure as director of the Institute of Pediatric and Adolescent Endocrinology at Rabin Medical Center (Beilinson Hospital) that he described the condition of short stature children who lack growth hormone receptors, which became internationally known as "Laron's Syndrome". This syndrome, a rare human genetic disease, causes dwarfism due to a lack of certain receptors necessary for bodily growth. His findings were and are considered medical milestones to this day, and his work has garnered international acclaim along with many prizes. During his career, he has published more than 1,000 scientific articles and written and edited about 30 books.

Professor Laron was born in Romania and immigrated to Israel upon the founding of the State. He studied at the Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem and did a specialization in endocrine diseases in children at Harvard University's Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Upon his return to Israel, he founded the Institute of Endocrinology and Diabetes at Rabin Medical Center (Beilinson Hospital) - the largest in the country - which he headed until his retirement in 1992. Prof. Laron is also a Professor Emeritus of Pediatric Endocrinology at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, where he still teaches today at age 82 and serves in a volunteer capacity as the Director of the Endocrinology and Diabetes Research Unit at Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel.

It is in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to medicine that he was awarded The Israel Prize for Medical Research in 2009, a great honor for Rabin Medical Center.