Robert Morgan Fink passes at 96

Robert Morgan Fink, 96, a retired UCLA biochemistry professor whose groundbreaking research with his biochemist wife included developing a new technique in the late 1940s to study the thyroid, died Wednesday of natural causes at his Pacific Palisades home. Dr. Fink was a pioneer who “is remembered as a very good scientist who did important work,” said Elizabeth Neufeld, former chairwoman of the Department of Biological Chemistry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The Finks were perhaps best known for a 1948 breakthrough in thyroid biochemistry called the “paper chromatography technique.” They used radioactive “tracer” chemicals on small samples of the thyroid and other body tissues, which caused them to essentially photograph themselves — and expose new and previously inconceivable detail. The technique was later adapted to determine if chemotherapy was helping cancer patients. Los Angeles Times Obituary