Dr. Philip Lanzkowsky was born in Cape Town on March 17, 1932 and graduated high school from the South African College and obtained his MB ChB degree from the University of Cape Town School of Medicine in 1954 and his Doctorate degree in 1959 for his thesis on Iron Deficiency Anemia In Children. He completed a pediatric residency at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town in 1960. After working in Pediatrics at the University of Edinburgh and at St Mary’s Hospital of the University of London, Dr. Lanzkowsky did a pediatric Hematology-Oncology fellowship at Duke University School of Medicine and at the University of Utah.

In 1963 he was appointed Consultant Pediatrician and Pediatric Hematologist to the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital at the University of Cape Town and introduced Pediatric Hematology and Oncology as a distinct discipline. In 1965 he was appointed Director of Pediatric Hematology and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the New York Hospital-Cornell University School of Medicine.

In 1970 he was appointed Professor of Pediatrics and Chairman of Pediatrics at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and established a division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology which he directed until 2000. He was the founder of the Schneider Children’s Hospital, which he developed, planned, and was the hospital’s Executive Director and Chief of Staff from its inception in 1983 until 2010.

Dr. Lanzkowsky has received numerous honors and awards and has lectured extensively at various institutions and medical schools in the United States and around the world. In addition to having been the author of five editions of the Manual of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology used by clinicians worldwide, he is the author of How It All Began: The History of a Children’s Hospital and over 280 scientific papers, abstracts, monographs, and book chapters.

Dr. Lanzkowsky’s medical writings have been prodigious. His seminal contributions to the medical literature have included the first description of the relationship of pica to iron-deficiency anemia (Arch. Dis Child., 1959), Effects of timing of clamping of umbilical cord on infant’s hemoglobin level (Br. Med. J., 1960), Normal oral D-xylose test values in children (New Engl. J. Med., 1963), Normal coagulation factors in women in labor and in the newborn (Thromboses at Diath. Hemorr., 1966), Erythrocyte abnormalities induced by malnutrition (Br. J. Haemat., 1967), Radiologic features in iron deficiency anemia (Am. J. Dis. Child., 1968), Isolated defect of folic acid absorption associated with mental retardation (Blood, 1969; Am. J. Med, 1970), Disaccharidase levels in iron deficiency (J. Pediat., 1981) and Hexokinase “New Hyde Park” in a Chinese kindred (Am. J. Hematol., 1981).