Morris Ziff, MD, a former professor of internal medicine at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and an expert in rheumatic diseases, died on August 22 in Dallas. He was 91.
Originally a chemist interested in how blood clots, Ziff later attended medical school and began research in rheumatic diseases, becoming an early expert in the causes and molecular mechanism of rheumatoid arthritis and similar diseases. Following discoveries of a signature antibody in the bloodstream of arthritis patients, Ziff traced the source of that antibody to joints inflamed by arthritis. A test for the antibody, the rheumatoid factor, has become a leading method to diagnose the disease.
Ziff received an undergraduate degree and, in 1937, a doctorate in chemistry from New York University. In 1948, he received his medical degree from the same university. Ziff moved to The University of Texas Health Science Center in 1958, now known as UT Southwestern, where he was named a professor of internal medicine, and later directed the Harold C. Simmons Arthritis Research Center.
In the mid-1960s, he was president of the American Rheumatism Association. He was awarded the Joseph J. Bunim Medal of the Pan-American Congress of Rheumatology in 1982. Ziff was appointed director of The University of Texas Arthritis Research Center in 1983 and continued to practice into the 1990s.