Denis Abelson was a professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA, with a clinical interest in endocrinology and was a past president of the Philadelphia Endocrine Society. 

Denis Maurice Abelson was born in London on 30 May 1925, the son of Phineas, a bookseller, and Cissie (née Fox). He attended Kingsbury County School and gained his medical degree in 1947 from London with clinical experience at the Middlesex Hospital, London. 

His house physician roles were spent at the City Hospital, Nottingham; Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield; in the neurology and casualty departments back at the Middlesex, and finally at the Brompton Hospital. Between 1950 and 1951 he took on his first junior medical registrar role, moving back to the Middlesex again to become a medical registrar from 1951 to 1953. It was this latter year at the Middlesex where he met his future wife Hilda Mary (née Plumley, whose brother Peter was a surgeon), known as ‘Plum’ and they married secretly within the year, honeymooning on a cross-country trip across the U.S. with lifelong friends John Vane (a future Nobel Prizewinner) and his wife Daphne. 

He spent 3 years at the Hammersmith Hospital between 1955 and 1958, then emigrated to the US with Plum and sons Jeremy and Simon for a combination of research and clinical roles – assistant professor of medicine at Yale, associate physician at Grace-New Haven Community Hospital and attending physician at the Veterans Administration Hospital, West Haven. 

In 1961 the family moved to Philadelphia where took up the role of associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and became chief of the endocrinology section at Graduate Hospital in the city, and director of their Clinical Research Center. A chair in medicine followed in 1971 at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, and he also became head of the clinical research unit at Lankenau Hospital in the city, where he stayed until the end of his career. Shortly afterwards, he opened another clinical practice at Waverly Heights, a not-for-profit life-plan community. 

Denis and Plum, who became an estate agent, founded the Abelson Artistry and Education Fund through Lankenau Hospital, which purchased the two electronic player pianos in the Hospital’s main lobbies. After his retirement, Denis could often be found playing the Hospital pianos, and the lobby piano many evenings at Waverly Heights.  

A family obituary published on his death spoke of ‘his wonderful smile, his captivating wit, and a straightforward, positive attitude toward life which belied an eclectic assortment of interests including traveling, music, food, chess, photography, and multiple patented inventions.’¹  

Denis died on 21 October 2019, preceded by Plum in 2011, leaving his sons Jeremy (wife Susan) and Simon (wife Anne), and grandchildren, Brianna, Cullen and Charlotte. 

RCP editor 

Sources/further reading 

1https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/mainlinemedianews/name/denis-abelson-obituary?id=11970865 (Accessed 23 June 2023)