
FREDERICK HECHT, MD, FAAP, FACMG
PAST ASSOCIATE CHIEF MEDICAL EDITOR
Frederick Hecht, MD, lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. Dr. Hecht is a Pediatrician and Medical
Geneticist and is certified by both the American Boards of
Pediatrics and Medical Genetics. Dr. Hecht was born and
raised in Baltimore and attended Dartmouth College in
Hanover, N.H. and the Sorbonne at the University of
Paris receiving his BA degree cum laude with distinction
from Dartmouth. He then studied at Middlebury College in
Vermont (in French), the Army Language School (in Russian)
in Monterey, California, the University of Maryland
(in German) and Boston University (in biomedical sciences)
before entering the University of Rochester School of
Medicine and Dentistry. He received his MD degree from
Rochester with honors.
Dr. Hecht trained first in Pediatrics at
Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY and at University
Hospital in Seattle and then in Medical Genetics at the
University of Washington. He has been on the medical school
faculty at the Universities of Rochester, Washington,
Oregon, Harvard, Arizona, Nevada and Nice (France). Dr. Hecht founded
and served as President and Director of the Southwest Biomedical
Research Institute in Arizona and Director of the Genetics Center
and Cancer Center, now part of Genzyme, Inc. He has held
administrative and research positions including that of
Principal Investigator for grants and contracts from the
National Institutes of Health. Dr. Hecht has taught at a
number of institutions including Harvard Medical School
and, most recently, served as Professor
on the Faculty of Medicine, University of Nice, France where he worked in the Laboratory for the
Molecular Genetics of Human Cancers, a unit of the
CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research).
Dr. Hecht has published extensively, served on multiple
medical journal editorial boards and reviewed articles for
distinguished biomedical journals including the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, Science, the
New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics and the Journal
of Pediatrics. He is Co-Editor-In-Chief of the Webster's New World™ Medical Dictionary, Year 2000 First Edition and Year 2003 Second Edition. Outside of medicine, Hecht is a poet, writer and editor. His biography is in Who's Who in America and similar publications.