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Bennie Zak, PhD (September 29, 1919–July 29, 2005)

Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Dr. Bennie Zak, whose career spanned the entire 50-year history of Clinical Chemistry, was a pioneer in our field and a beloved professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine, where he taught for more than 50 years.

Bennie Zak was the second of 4 children born to Lithuanian immigrant parents. His mother wanted him to be named Bernard, but with her thick accent it sounded like Bennie to the doctor at the Women’s Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, so Bennie it was.

After graduating from high school, Bennie was unable to afford college tuition, so he sold books to burlesque performers in Detroit while he tried to decide between boxing and comedy as career paths. The US Army Air Corps made his decision for him by drafting him in 1943. The Army trained Bennie as a navigator, an irony never lost on those of us who traveled—and became hopelessly lost—with him. When we reminded him of his training as a navigator, he countered that he was trained to navigate by the stars. I once opened my sunroof and said, "So navigate!" Bennie simply stated that the stars were different over Europe, where he had done his flying. That response was so typically Bennie: brief and to the point. Anything else would have been superfluous information and therefore not worth spending time on.

Bennie spent 16 months as a prisoner of war and was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in an exploding aircraft. On receiving his honorable discharge and after a prolonged 2-week courtship, he proposed to and later married Doris Selby in 1946. Bennie and Doris became the . . . [Full Text of this Article]