Charles Hesdorffer

Dr. Charles Hesdorffer completed his medical training in Johannesburg South Africa in 1978. After completing his residency he emigrated to the US in 1986 where he undertook a research fellowship in Hematology and Oncology at Columbia University in New York, where after joining the faculty he started the Bone Marrow Transplant and Cell Therapy Programs in 1986. In 2005 he moved to Johns Hopkins and subsequently to the NIH/National Institute on Aging where he became involved in determining the cause of the “Anemia of Aging” as well as defining the role that inflammation plays in aging and immune senescence. Following a further 5 years running the Translational Medicine Research Group at the VA Medical Center in Washington DC he retired as a Professor of Medicine at George Washington Medical Center and the Armed Forces College of Medicine in 2017 and joined the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland where he presently continues as a Special Volunteer in the Hematology Service. Dr. Hesdorffer’s connection to the Leo Baeck Institute began over a decade ago when his farther, Heinz Hesdorffer, who was a survivor of a number of concentration camps, emigrated from South Africa to join his family in the USA in 2004, and where, through the auspices of the LBI, he published a book on his experiences. Late in life, Heinz went back to Germany to tell his story at schools and other educational institutions. Dr. Hesdorffer is eager to support the LBI’s mission by furthering the educational work that his father undertook.