Bruno Lunenfeld
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The Modern Laboratory
Bruno Lunenfeld
He saw in the hormones of women past the menopause a way to help younger women conceive.
Vienna, Geneva, Israel. Bruno Lunenfeld was born in Vienna in 1927. He took his medical degree at the University of Geneva in 1954. From 1957 he worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He went on to direct the Institute of Endocrinology at the Sheba Medical Center until 1992.
A hormone from urine. After the menopause, the body makes large amounts of the hormones that tell the ovary to grow follicles, and some of it passes into the urine. In 1949 the Italian chemist Piero Donini had extracted and purified this material, but it was little used. Lunenfeld saw what it might do for women whose own bodies could not make these hormones. Working with Donini, he helped turn it into a medicine that could be made in quantity and given in measured doses: human menopausal gonadotrophin, or hMG.
1962. With colleagues in Israel, Lunenfeld used hMG to grow the follicles, then hCG to bring the egg to ripeness. In 1962 his team reported the first pregnancy after this treatment, in a woman whose body could not make the hormones herself. Later papers with Donini refined the purification of hMG and separated its two hormones, FSH and LH. In 1981 Howard and Georgeanna Jones in Norfolk, Virginia, adopted the same pairing of hMG and hCG for IVF.
A long working life. In 1969 Lunenfeld founded the Department of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University, where he is now professor emeritus. He advised the World Health Organization from 1967 and chaired its expert committee on biological standardisation in 1972. He served Israel's Ministry of Health in international relations and as acting chief scientist. Later he turned to the health of older men. He founded the International Society for the Study of the Aging Male and organised its first world congress, in Geneva in 1998.
Honours. His prizes include the Pliskin Prize in 1962 and the Yofe Prize in 1963. He became an ad eundem Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1981, and the German government gave him its Order of Distinction in 1995. Every stimulated IVF cycle still begins, in a sense, with his first careful doses.
Also see: Piero Donini, Howard W. Jones Jr, Georgeanna Seegar Jones
About the sources
- Bar-Ilan University, Faculty of Life Sciences: Prof. (Emeritus) Bruno Lunenfeld, curriculum vitae (life-sciences.biu.ac.il/en/node/744), consulted October 2026: MD Geneva 1954; Weizmann Institute 1957 to 1961; Director, Institute of Endocrinology, Sheba Medical Center, to 1992; Bar-Ilan Department of Life Sciences founded 1969, professor emeritus from 1992; Ministry of Health posts; WHO from 1967; FRCOG ad eundem 1981.
- International Society for the Study of the Aging Male: executive biography of Prof. Bruno Lunenfeld (issam.ch/executive/Lunenfeld.htm): born Vienna 1927; medical degree Geneva; Institute of Endocrinology, Sheba, 1969 to 1992; first world congress on the aging male, Geneva, February 1998; Pliskin Prize 1962, Yofe Prize 1963, German Order of Distinction 1995.
- Endometriosis.org congress report: “GNRH2011: 50 years of the human clinical use of gonadotrophins” (development of hMG with Piero Donini).
- Lunenfeld B, Bilger W, Longobardi S, Alam V, D'Hooghe T, Sunkara SK. The development of gonadotropins for clinical use in the treatment of infertility. Frontiers in Endocrinology 2019;10:429 (PMC6616070): hMG from post-menopausal urine; first reported pregnancy after hMG and hCG, 1962; WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization chaired by Lunenfeld, 1972; the Joneses' hMG/hCG protocols of 1981.
- Merck KGaA corporate history, “Story: Infertility” (emdgroup.com): Donini's extraction and purification of gonadotrophin from post-menopausal urine, 1949.
- Donini P, Puzzuoli D, D'Alessio I, Lunenfeld B, Eshkol A, Parlow AF. Purification and separation of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) from human postmenopausal gonadotrophin (HMG). Acta Endocrinologica 1966;52:186–198.
- Lunenfeld B. Historical perspectives in gonadotrophin therapy. Human Reproduction Update 2004;10(6):453–467 (abstract consulted).
- Zitzmann M, Sansone A, Jannini EA, Jones H, Ferlin A, Lunenfeld B. Recommendations for diagnosis and treatment of the aging male with Klinefelter syndrome. The Aging Male 2025 (PubMed 40536882), as evidence of continued activity.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
