The Chicago Section Senior Investigator Award is named in honor of Samuel R. Natelson, Ph.D. Dr. Natelson was one of the real GIANTS in clinical chemistry was one of the founding members of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry, a founder of the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry and also founded the Chicago Section of AACC. Samuel Natelson received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry by New York University in 1932 and spent the next 15 years involved with a variety of industry and research related positions in which he spent some of that time working the synthesis of steroids and developed a method for the analysis of cholesterol. It was shortly after he joined the research staff at the Jewish Hospitals of Brooklyn that he discovered a passion for clinical chemistry. In 1949 he accepted a position at Rockford (IL) Memorial Hospital as the clinical chemist that his service career really blossomed.  Samuel returned to New York in 1958 at St. Vincent's Hospital as head of the Department of Biochemistry. Finally, in 1965 he accepted the position as senior research biochemist and director of the Department of Biochemistry at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. His contributions to the field of clinical chemistry are too numerous that to provide a brief synopsis would not do justice to his accomplishments. Instead I direct you to new complimentary articles published in Clinical Chemistry that details his love of clinical chemistry. Among a large part of his legacy to clinical chemistry included chemists he trained. These include Drs. Norbert Tietz, Amedeo Pesce, John Sherwin and Robert Murray among many other notable scientists. The Samuel R. Natelson Award is the oldest award given by the Chicago Section of AACC.