NIDDK Mourns Chemist Glaudemans
NIDDK alumnus Dr. Cornelis P.J. “Neil” Glaudemans, 85, died on Feb. 1 following a series of respiratory and cardiac complications.
An NIDDK scientist for more than 30 years and past chief of its Laboratory of Chemistry, he was a well-known carbohydrates expert. Among his many career highlights was work leading to a single-shot shigella vaccine. He retired in 1998 and served for 2 more years as scientist emeritus.
Glaudemans was born in 1932 in the Dutch East Indies, where his father worked with a shipping company. His early education was interrupted during WWII by 3 years he spent in Japanese concentration camps. After the war, his family returned to Holland where he went to secondary school and college, obtaining his B.Sc. degree in chemistry from the University of Utrecht in 1954. He went to Canada for graduate education at McGill University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1958.
He came to NIH in 1962 as a postdoctoral associate. Three years later he joined the faculty of Yale University Medical School and simultaneously served as visiting scientist at New York University Medical Center. After returning to NIH, he collaborated with Dr. Michael Potter of the National Cancer Institute in work on the molecular interaction of myeloma monoclonal antibodies with bacterial antigens.
Over the years, he received the assistance of some 40 postdoctoral associates in the Visiting Program.
Glaudemans’ family owned several sailboats, ending with a 34-foot vessel—the Wilhelmina—in which they often cruised the Chesapeake Bay. With friends, and often with one of his six sons, Glaudemans sailed from Annapolis to Maine, Puerto Rico, Tortola in the British Virgin Islands and Charleston, S.C.
For about a decade, Glaudemans taught celestial navigation for yachtsmen in the Montgomery County Adult Education Program and wrote a monograph on the subject. His two greatest passions were ensemble playing (violin) baroque and classical music and painting watercolors and oils.
Glaudemans authored and co-authored some 190 scientific publications. He became a citizen of the U.S. in 1964.
He was predeceased by his wife Marlene in 2005.