In Memoriam: Felix A. Conte, MD, 1935 - 2024

Dr. Felix Anthony Conte, a beloved, highly respected, and influential clinical pediatric endocrinologist, passed away on December 4, 2024 at age 89. Felix was born on June 18, 1935 in Pittsburgh PA, and was subsequently raised by his mother, Josie, and her extended Italian family in the Bronx, NY.  His father, Angelo, worked in a post office in Pittsburgh, and would often come to the Bronx on weekends.  All of this led to Felix’s lifelong love of both the Steelers and the Yankees, and even deep in 49ers territory he wore his Steelers’ cap with great pride.  Felix had two younger siblings—his brother, Joe, who became a dentist, and his sister, Jackie, who raised three children.

Felix attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City and received his BA in 1957 from Columbia University, where he played (sparingly) as a backup center on the football team. After college he attended NYU School of Medicine, received his MD in 1961, then did his pediatric internship and residency at New York’s Bellevue Hospital (1961-64), where he met his lifelong love, Mary Cronemeyer (1938-2017). According to Mary’s obituary, “Mary was a nurse at Bellevue in the early 1960s when Dr. Felix Conte worked up the courage after three years to ask her out. After their sixth date, Mary informed Felix that she had decided to become a nun. Felix proposed on the spot. Mary promptly went on a three-month missionary trip to Mexico before responding. When she returned she accepted his proposal, much to the relief of her future children.” Mary and Felix married in 1963. In 1964 Felix joined Mel Grumbach’s pediatric endocrinology fellowship program at Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, beginning their lifelong association. Felix was ‘called up’ to the US Army, serving in the Medical Corps at Ft. Meade, Maryland (1966-68), then rejoined Mel, who had moved to UCSF as Chairman of Pediatrics, to complete his fellowship (1968-69). He returned to New York for one year as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, but Mel, UCSF, and San Francisco were powerful magnets, drawing Felix back to UCSF in 1970, where Felix remained until he was ‘called up’ by an even Higher Power.

Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, UCSF Pediatric Endocrinology was dominated by the troika of Mel Grumbach, Selna Kaplan, who had been Mel’s fellow at Columbia and ran the radioimmunoassay lab, and Felix, who carried the lion’s share of the clinical workload. Felix was a brilliant clinician with encyclopedic knowledge and an astonishing ability to cite almost any paper he had ever read. He rose through the academic ranks, reaching Professor in 1995, contributing 57 peer-reviewed original publications and 38 book chapters, almost all in major reference textbooks. He made several major scientific contributions, including: i) the first report of feto-maternal lymphocyte transfer (Lancet, 1969), a landmark observation that underlies now-routine diagnosis of fetal genetic disorders via the mother’s blood; ii) his insightful diagnosis of the first patient with aromatase deficiency (PNAS 1993, JCEM 1994), and iii) his discovery of the biphasic pattern of gonadotropin secretion in patients with (JCEM 1975) and without (JCEM 1980) gonadal dysgenesis. Felix was extraordinarily insightful about potential clinical implications of new, basic research, but would caution against glib extrapolations with his most famous saying: “Rats are not people, even though some people are rats”.

Felix loved to teach. He taught reproductive physiology and endocrinology to undergraduates at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, taught pre-clinical and clinical courses to UCSF medical students, supervised residents and directly supervised and taught 87 pediatric endocrine fellows (including the five authors of this obituary). Felix didn’t like to travel, but he attended meetings in Europe and North America and was a lifelong contributor to the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, serving on multiple committees from 1980-2000 including as a Director (1989-92).

But Felix’s true passion was for clinical pediatric endocrinology and his patients. Even Mel was dazzled by his clinical acumen, calling him ‘the endocrinologist’s endocrinologist’. Felix would stay on the wards, pour over the patient’s data at all hours, and frequently called the on-call fellow at strange hours, even though they would be rounding together in the morning. In 2003, Felix was elected to UCSF’s Gold Headed Cane Society in recognition of his clinical expertise as a physician and long service as a teacher. Felix was known for his big laugh, boyish sense of humor, and corny jokes. His patients adored him and the fellows always went to him for an authoritative answer about anything; many of us continued to consult him even decades later.

Felix was a devoted, deeply religious, family man, who was immensely proud of his and Mary’s five children, and delighted in their lives and the lives of their eleven grandchildren. Felix Conte was both an iconoclast and an icon. He embodied intellect, compassion, kindness, and humility. He was beloved because he was always himself. He will be sorely missed.