Doris Korey - Albert Einstein College of Medicine

BIOGRAPHY OF SAUL R. KOREY BY HIS WIFE
Doris K. Korey, M.S.W.
Saul was born in New York City on April 12th, 1918, the son of a
physician, and the older of two children. His younger brother had Down
syndrome and died at the age of three, I believe of scarlet fever. Saul
attended public school for the first several years, and then was accepted at
a High School for very bright students I can't recall the name. What I
do remember is his telling me was that he was driven there but asked the
chauffeur to drop him off a few blocks before the school he didn't
want the other students to see him in a chauffeur-driven car. He also came
with a lot of sandwiches for lunch, which he shared with the students who
had little. I mention this only because these decent, caring qualities were
part of his character all his life. After graduation he was accepted at
Cornell. He told me that he played cards at Cornell, and joked around. “I
didn't work hard at all.” He attended only for two years, because at the
age of 16 he learned he could be accepted at medical school in Canada,
and went to the University of Western Ontario for six years. He
occasionally experienced anti-Semitism from other students there, and, oh
yes, occasionally beat them up. At the end of six years of medical school
Saul was graduated number one in the class and won five out of the six
awards. Psychiatry was the only one he didn't get. Saul had just turned 22.
The year was 1940/41 and Saul was shortly afterwards drafted into
the Coast Guard. He served aboard ship till he fell one day and dislocated
his shoulder. In a way that was lucky for me, because when he came out

of the hospital I met him. We were married in 1944, and Saul was
assigned to the Marine Hospital in New Orleans.
In 1945, when he was discharged from the Service at the end of the
war, Saul was accepted at The Neurological Institute (NI) of Columbia
Presbyterian, where he became Chief Resident. When he left NI he spent
a couple of years studying I believe with Dr. Ochoa at NYU and Dr.
David Nachmansohn back at Columbia. Then on to Western Reserve in
Cleveland in 1955, until Dr Irving London called Saul to come to New
York to help set up the Einstein College of Medicine, particularly the
Division of Neurology, which in three years became a Department in its
own right.
Please understand in every way that Saul was a great man. I
remember he said to me when he was in the hospital dying of pancreatic
cancer, that he hoped his work would be remembered. A little later, lying
in bed in the hospital, he said “I'm wrong, it's my family that is most
important to me.” Yes indeed, Saul was a great husband, a wonderful
father, a precious soul.
He died at the age of 45, on September 27, 1963.
March 1, 2007