Clark M. Blatteis

Born in Berlin, Germany, his Jewish family was forced to flee their home to escape further Nazi persecution after his father's arrest in the aftermath of Kristallnacht and as a condition for his release from Buchenwald concentration camp where he was a prisoner. They were among the 937 Jewish German refugees aboard the MS St. Louis who were denied entry into Cuba, the United States, Canada, and all the other western hemisphere countries, and consequently obliged to return to Europe. There, the family was granted refuge in Belgium, but had to flee again when that country was invaded by the Nazis in 1940. They made their way ultimately to Casablanca, French Morocco,[1] where Blatteis attended school from elementary through high school, partly (1940-1942) under Nazi (Vichy-France) occupation.

The family was finally able to immigrate to the United States in 1948, where Blatteis continued his education, earning a BA from Rutgers University in 1954, and a MS and a PhD in physiology under the mentorship of Dr. Steven M. Horvath in 1955 and 1957, respectively, from the University of Iowa. Blatteis later recalled that his introduction by Horvath to his later field of research was "trying to maintain my own body temperature as a test subject in the cold room."[2] Immediately following his graduation, he was drafted into the US Army and assigned as a First Lieutenant, Medical Service Corps, to the US Army Medical Research Laboratory at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he served until 1961. From 1961 to 1962 he was a NIH postdoctoral fellow under Dr. Alberto Hurtado at the Institute of Andean Biology, San Marcos University in Lima, Peru, and from 1962 to 1963, under Dr. Geoffrey S. Dawes at the Nuffield Institute, University of Oxford.[1] in Oxford, UK.

Upon his return to the US in 1963, Blatteis joined the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts, as a civilian researcher and Branch Chief.[1][3] In 1966, Blatteis was appointed to the faculty of the Department of Physiology, University of Tennessee College of Medicine, as an associate professor, becoming a full professor in 1974.[1][4][5]

The bulk of his research over his years at the University of Tennessee concerned the elucidation of the physiologic mechanism that initiates fever and its associated reactions to infectious pathogens. In 1996 he co-edited with M.J. Fregly the American Physiological Society's Handbook of Physiology, Sec. 4, Environmental Physiology, vols. 1 & 2, and in 1998 he co-authored and edited the textbook, Physiology and Pathophysiology of Temperature Regulation, noted as containing "all essential aspects of human thermoregulation".[6] He has authored and/or co-authored three other books and over 200 original scientific articles and reviews. He was twice a Senior Fulbright-Hays Scholar, held numerous fellowships and visiting professorships abroad, and received several Honoris Causa diplomas. In 2003 he received the Honor Award from the Environmental and Exercise Physiology Section of the American Physiological Society, and in 2007 the Society selected Blatteis to be profiled by their Living History in Physiology Project, recognizing "senior members who have made extraordinary contributions during their career to the advancement of the discipline and profession of physiology".[1][7] He was elected a Fellow of the American Physiological Society [8] in 2019. Blatteis worked at the bench at the University of Tennessee for forty-two years, retiring from active research on October 1, 2008,[2] but is continuing on the faculty to this writing.

Blatteis met Yolanda Fuentes Barriga of Cusco, Peru while they both were attending the University of Iowa.[7] They were married in March 1958 and had three children.[9]

• Clark M. Blatteis, PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus page at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine
• Holocaust survivor Dr. Clark Blatteis spoke to 8th grade students at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School, Catholic Diocese of Memphis