Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D. b. 1946 Hall of Fame 2009 "Jeff is the most important innovator and educator in natural medicine in North America." -Abram Hoffer Jeffrey Bland was born in 1946 in Illinois, and grew up in Southern California, where he graduated from the University of California, Irvine, in 1967 with degrees in biology and chemistry. In 1971, he completed his doctorate degree in synthetic organic chemistry and began his career as a university professor and researcher at the University of Puget Sound with a dual appointment in Chemistry and Environmental Sciences. In 1976, Dr. Bland was certified as a Certified Clinical Laboratory Director, was tenured in 1977. From 1976-1995, he served as a prominent educator for the natural foods and nutritional supplement industries and was involved in the founding of Bastyr University of Natural Health Sciences in Seattle, the first accredited university of naturopathic medicine in North America. In 1981, Bland was invited by Linus Pauling to become the Director of Nutritional Supplement Analysis at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto, California. In 1984, he started HealthComm, a company dedicated to teaching physicians and other licensed health care providers how to successfully implement nutrition intervention into their practices. Since 1978, Dr. Bland has authored four books on nutrition and health for the general public and six books for health professionals. He is also the principal author of over 100 peer-reviewed research papers on nutritional biochemistry. With his establishment of the Institute for Functional Medicine in 1991, Jeffrey Bland conceptualized functional medicine as a patient-centered systems biology approach to medicine. Utilizing his Textbook of Functional Medicine, first published by the Institute in 2005, Dr. Bland introduced the concept of functional medicine to Europe, Asia, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand. Since 2000, Jeffrey Bland has served as the Chief Science Officer of Metagenics and the President of Metaproteomics, a nutrigenomic research and development company employing more than 40 scientists and physicians at its research centers. Dr. Bland merged his company, HealthComm International, with Metagenics, the combined Metagenics has become the largest global nutraceutical and medical food company serving the fields of functional and integrative medicine. In 2006, Jeffrey Bland established "Synthesis" on his website to serve as a repository for his functional medicine educational materials.