Albert M. Kligman, 93, dermatology researcher

Albert M. Kligman attracted national attention after two major episodes in his long life.

"He is best known for the invention of topical tretinoin (Retin-A) for acne and photodamaged skin," the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine stated last week.

But in 2000, Dr. Kligman, Dow Chemical, and others were sued by 298 former prisoners at Holmesburg Prison who alleged that as convicts they suffered - as paid but unknowing subjects between 1961 and 1974 - from his skin experiments using the chemical dioxin.

In 2002, a federal judge ruled that the statute of limitations had expired. An appeal was denied.

Dr. Kligman, 93, a former dermatology professor at the Penn School of Medicine, died of heart failure Feb. 9 at Pennsylvania Hospital.

The biography that Penn released as a basis for his obituary included the statement Dr. Kligman made in 1998 when a book critical of his work was published:

"As I have stated repeatedly in the past whenever this issue has arisen, my use of paid prisoners as research subjects in the 1950s and 1960s was in keeping with this nation's standard protocol for conducting scientific investigations at that time.

"To the best of my knowledge, the result of those experiments advanced our knowledge of the pathogenesis of skin disease, and no long-term harm was done to any person who voluntarily participated in the research program."

But the subject did not go away.

In 2003, 10 former Holmesburg prisoners demonstrated outside the College of Physicians in Center City in protest of the lifetime-achievement award the organization gave Dr. Kligman.

The protesters were organized by Allen M. Hornblum, an adjunct professor of urban studies at Temple University, who had written the 1998 book Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison - A True Story of Abuse and Exploitation in the Name of Medical Science.

In a 1998 Inquirer interview about the book, Hornblum said: "They were not using members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. They were not using members of the Philadelphia City Council. They were using the Great Unwashed, the dispossessed."

In 1986, two former Holmesburg prisoners reached settlements with Dr. Kligman, the city, Penn, and Dow in a suit filed after The Inquirer disclosed in 1981 that Dr. Kligman had conducted prison experiments into the effects of dioxin on human skin.

In 1988, a staff reporter wrote in The Inquirer's Sunday magazine that Dr. Kligman was "an effervescent man who seems to radiate energy, bombastic opinions and good humor."

The article noted that he "may be his own best advertisement" for Retina-A. "At 71, he looks at least 10 years younger."

Noting that Retin-A is often received as if it were a product of the Fountain of Youth, he told the reporter, "I'm not Ponce de Leon. . . . I'm just Al Kligman doing the best I can."

But, the reporter wrote, Dr. Kligman "entered the field of dermatology by mistake."

With a doctorate in botany from Penn, he "planned to go on a government-sponsored botany expedition to South America during World War II." But the trip was canceled.

"I didn't know what to do," he told the reporter, so his first wife, a physician, suggested medical school.

The reporter wrote that "a friend suggested - erroneously, Kligman later learned - that his knowledge of fungus would be helpful in the field of dermatology, so after he graduated . . . he became a dermatologic researcher at Penn. . . .

"It was at Holmesburg, with prisoners as test subjects, that Kligman worked out his original use of Retin-A."

Dr. Kligman received a patent for his discovery "for use as an acne medication" in 1975 and then "as a wrinkle-reducing agent, with the name Retin-A," in 1986, a Penn spokesman said.

Born in Philadelphia, Dr. Kligman graduated in 1933 from Overbrook High School and earned a bachelor's degree in botany in 1939 at Pennsylvania State University, where he was captain of the gymnastics team.

He took his doctorate in botany in 1942 at Penn, where he wrote Handbook of Mushroom Culture, based on his research on farms around Kennett Square.

After earning his medical degree at Penn in 1947, Dr. Kligman began his career at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania as an attending physician in 1951, the same year that he began teaching as an associate in dermatology at the medical school. He became a full professor in 1957.

His resume stated that Dr. Kligman cowrote 14 books, beginning with Textbook on Dermatology, published by W.B. Saunders in Philadelphia in 1956, and ending with the third edition of Acne and Rosacea, published by Springer Verlag in Berlin in 2000.

He was president of the Philadelphia Dermatological Society in 1975-76 and president of the Society for Investigative Dermatology in 1977-78.

In 1996, he set up fellowships with which scientists can travel to annual meetings of the national society. He endowed two professorships and two tuition funds.

In 1998, he received the distinguished graduate award from Penn's School of Medicine and the distinguished alumni award from Penn State.

Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, each gave him an honorary doctorate.

Dr. Kligman is survived by his wife of 37 years, Lorraine; sons Douglas and Michael; daughter Gail; stepsons Robert and Keith Lesnik; a sister; six grandchildren; and his first wife, Beatrice Troyan. His second wife, Mitzi Melnicoff, died in 1972, soon after their marriage.

A private service took place Feb. 11, a Penn spokesman said.