Alfred F. Hess

Born in New York City on October 9, 1875, Alfred Fabian Hess was an American physician and clinical investigator whose career centered on children's health. Reliable sources agree that he became especially well known for research on the nutritional causes and prevention of scurvy and rickets.

Hess worked as a pediatrician and pursued research that helped clarify the role of diet and light exposure in rickets, work that later made him a notable figure in the history of vitamin research. He is also associated with the Hess test, a sign used in medicine to assess capillary fragility.

He died on December 5, 1933, at age 58. Although brief summaries do not capture the full range of his career, they consistently present him as an influential early 20th-century physician whose studies helped shape modern understanding of deficiency diseases.