Arnold Walfred Lindall

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Arnold Walfred Lindall MD PhD

Doctor Lindall was born in Duluth, Minnesota on July 11, 1934. His parents were Arnold Lindall senior and Jessie May Lindall (maiden name Marks). The family moved to Minneapolis and then to Bloomington, Minnesota. He graduated from Bloomington High School in 1952 as valedictorian and was a member of the National Honor Society. In high school his activities included debate and the band in which he played the clarinet. This led to a long time love of music. Since his father worked for the Ford Motor Company in St Paul, he was eligible to compete for a Ford Motor Company Fund Scholarship, which he won.

He attended the University of Minnesota and after three years of premedical course work he entered medical school. After his freshman year he entered the MD PhD program serving also as a teaching assistant in anatomy courses. His wife Marlene, who was from Chisholm, Minnesota, and he were married in 1955 prior to his entering medical school. The next year she graduated with a teaching degree and helped fund the remaining education and various training programs. Marlene later went back to school to become certified in special education. Dr Lindall received his MD and PhD in 1962. His PhD was in anatomy with a minor in biochemistry. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha, the honorary medical fraternity. He remained in the Department of Anatomy as an assistant professor after graduation and later was a Markel Scholar. He rose to the rank of associate professor after a hiatus as an intern in Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis. In 1967 he took a residency in internal medicine at Hennepin County General Hospital, now called the Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis.

At the university his research was initially mainly in experimental diabetes using cytochemica] and biochemical techniques. He was also advisor to six graduate students who were granted PhDs. All became notable contributors to science and teaching. He was the first to isolate intact insulin secretion granules from teleost fish islets, work done at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod. Later he developed methods to isolate islets from mammalian pancreas variations of which are used in current transplant techniques. His research areas moved to diseases of calcium metabolism for which he developed measuring techniques for calcium regulating hormones. His main areas of interest then were peptide chemistry and immunochemistry. He pioneered many methods of analysis using synthetic peptides and affinity extraction. Dr Lindall over the years published over 90 scientific papers and abstracts in a wide variety of fields. He also received several patents in a variety of areas.

Dr Lindall’s clinical interests were mainly in endocrinology although he did general internal medicine as well. Later he was also associate professor or medicine and laboratory medicine. After his residency he set up and directed a non-profit reference laboratory division of the Minneapolis War Memorial Blood Bank doing hormone analyses for Minnesota hospitals mostly using technology that he and his colleagues had developed. Leaving the blood bank in 1975 he started a medical practice in Stillwater, Minnesota and at the same time founded a company, Immunonuclear Corporation, that manufactured diagnostic kits for laboratories doing hormone analysis by radioimmunoassay and which later became a public company. After serving as its CEO for 10 years he left the company in 1985. It still exists by the name of Diasorin after being bought and sold a number of times and later taken private. As the company’s chief scientist he traveled to Europe many times and lectured at scientific conferences. Maintaining his attachment to the University of Minnesota he was an adjunct professor of Anatomy, which later became the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroanatomy.

Dr Lindall was involved with formation of a number of other startup medical companies. One of these was Angiomedics, a company in Minneapolis, which manufactured coronary artery catheters. Another one was Pandex founded in Chicago, which developed a unique instrument for fluorescent immunochemical analyses. Another company was Genetic Design, founded in Greensboro, North Carolina, which did disputed paternity testing. There were others not as notable. He invested his own funds and served on their boards and sometimes was involved in their research. These companies were in most cases sold to larger companies. He also was a consultant to several investment companies, several other technical companies and was on the board of his local bank in Stillwater Minnesota.

In terms of other interests Dr Lindall has always been an avid fisherman particularly on the St. Croix River (Wisconsin-Minnesota).

He also was a founding member of Muskies Inc, which has grown to be a very large conservation organization promoting quality fishing and conservation. This interest continues to this day and is documented in an unpublished manuscript. In addition he has been an avid automobile collector and restorer owning as many as sixteen cars at one time. In 1975 he began to fly airplanes, which led to instrument and float ratings. He has owned all or part of a multitude of aircraft including a Cessna 172, two World War II trainers, a biplane trainer called an N3N and a BT 13. He also owned several Cessna 206 amphibious floatplanes, a Bellanca super decathlon and a Bonanza A36. Finally he constructed a high performance aerobatic aircraft known as a Christen Eagle and flew that for a number of years.

Dr Lindall is now retired and lives in Bayport, Minnesota with Marlene. They have two children, Scott and David, and four grandchildren all living nearby. For many years they lived in Marine on St Croix, Minnesota and they maintained a home in Vero Beach, Florida where they spent part of the winter months. They also have a home on the Kettle River in central Minnesota in a very private setting surrounded by wildlife and forest. There he collects vinyl records, high fidelity music systems, antique fishing tackle, maintains his cars and photographs wild flowers.