Many of the biographers of Dr. Louis Gluck refer to him as the "father of neonatology." Born in Newark, New Jersey, he was educated at Rutgers and at the University of Chicago School of Medicine. In 1959, he became the first director of the Division of Neonatology at Stanford, later holding faculty positions at Yale, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine. He made many important contributions to neonatology as it developed into a true pediatric subspecialty, among them are his identification of the importance of handwashing in the prevention of Staph aureus sepsis in the nursery, the design of the first open-room neonatology intensive care units, and the development of the Lecithin/Sphingomyelin Ratio (L/S Ratio) test to assess fetal lung maturity. He edited more than a dozen professional journals during his career and authored more than 300 articles. Dr. Gluck died in 1997 at the age of 73 in Laguna Hills, California.