HISTORICAL AND COMMEMORATIVE
MEDALS
COLLECTION OF
BENJAMIN WEISS
Biographical
Sketch of Benjamin Weiss
Born in the Bronx and raised on a chicken farm in New Jersey, Ben received his undergraduate and graduate training from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, where he earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1963. He took a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Heart Institute, National Institute of Health. Since then he worked at Columbia University, the National Institute of Mental Health, where he held the position of Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrinology, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania, where he held the positions of Professor of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, and Chief of the Division of Neuropsychopharmacology. He was also a Visiting Scientist at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, Italy, and a Visiting Scientist at the Weitzman Institute in Israel. He currently is Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.
During his scientific career Weiss has received several Honors and Awards, including a Gold Medal for attaining the Highest Scholastic Average of College Graduates, the Joseph W. E. Harrison Gold Medal for Excellence in Pharmacology, the Frederick William Haussman Memorial Prize, the Dobbins Scholarship, Rexall Award, Borden Award, the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, a MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, a Research Medal awarded by the University of Milan, Milan, Italy, and an Outstanding Scientist Award from the China Bureau of Foreign Experts Affairs, Suzhou, China. He was also named as one of the Top One Thousand Most Quoted Scientists in the World.
Dr. Weiss has edited two books and has published over 300 scientific articles on his research in the fields of Molecular Biology and Molecular Pharmacology. He has been an invited speaker at most of the major universities and research institutions in the United States and at dozens of national and international conferences, which has afforded him the opportunity of visiting some of the greatest museum collections of medals in the world. These included a number of fine collections of medals not normally on public display, such as the wonderful collection of medals compiled by George III of England at the British Museum, London, the entire Kress Collection of Renaissance Medals at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Vernon Hall Collection of European Medals, the Hunterian Collection at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the collection of Italian Baroque medals at the Modena Museum, Modena, Italy.
Ben was introduced to the field of medal collecting in 1972 and since then has been an avid collector of Historical and Commemorative Medals. He is currently a Board Member of the Medal Collectors of America and the Webmaster of the Medal Collectors of America website. In addition to collecting medals and working on his website (www.historicalartmedals.com), Ben now spends his time woodworking, gardening, and playing with his grandchildren.
His recently published article explores the role of Medals as Instruments for Promoting Bigotry: Medallic History of Religious and Racial Intolerance
A portion of Ben's medal collection is currently on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.