Millennium Magazine_2ndEd

A Marquis Who's Who Magazine 37 S ince 1975, Dr. Chester Allan Alper has served as a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. With more than five decades of experience, he continues to do important work in the field after dedicating much of his career to researching a model for Type 1 diabetes. As a senior investigator for the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, he heads the Alper Laboratory, which studies the genetics of complex, polygenic diseases in humans with a focus on autoimmunity, particularly within the genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of chromosome 6. He and his colleagues specifically investigate the relationship between genetic differences in the human MHC and differences in the immune function of a variety of white blood cells or leukocytes. Before accomplishing groundbreaking work in his field, Dr. Alper earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard University in 1952 and 1956, respectively. He subsequently began interning at Boston City Hospital before serving as an assistant resident at Boston Medical Center. From 1960 to 1962, Dr. Alper worked in Sweden as a research fellow before returning to Boston for a similar position with Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He returned to his alma mater in 1969 and later worked for Boston Children’s Hospital and The Rockefeller University. Aside from practicing medicine, Dr. Alper has served as an editorial board member of several journals, including Experimental and Clinical Immunogenetics, Tissue Antigens, Immunogenetics, Complement, the Journal of Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Immunopathology, and the Journal of Clinical Immunology, which he has been affiliated with since 1999. His research on infectious diseases has led him to receive a MERIT Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and a fellowship with the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Dr. Alper has been included in the 2011 and 2018 editions of Who’s Who in America. CHESTER ALLAN ALPER, MD PEDIATRICIAN, EDUCATOR Boston Children’s Hospital Boston, MA