Wexler, Nancy, 1945–, American geneticist and neuropsychologist, b. Washington, D.C., Ph.D. Univ. of Michigan, 1974. After her mother was diagnosed with Huntington's disease in 1968, her father, the psychoanalyst Herman Wexler, founded the Hereditary Disease Foundation. In 1979 she led a team that spent two decades researching Huntington's disease, which led to the discovery of the gene that causes it and a test for the disease. A professor at Columbia since 1985, Wexler also has been president of the Hereditary Disease Foundation since 1983.
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