Breakthrough discovery of HbA1c by Professor Samuel Rahbar in 1968.

around 1977 to monitor the management of diabetes, although its noassay test became available, and HbA1c manual immunoassay analyzer has been in use since 1992.2 Importantly, the test is now standardized and used world-over and, more recently, for the diagnosis of diabetes.3 Samuel Rahbar was born in Hamadan, Iran in 1929. He enrolled in the Tehran University Medical School and graduated in 1953. In due course, Dr. Rahbar practiced medicine in Abadan and Tehran till 1959. Thereafter, he started his postdoctoral immunology fellowship at Tehran University and received his PhD in 1963. He was promoted to Assistant Professor at the Department of Immunology and then became an Associate Professor in 1965.4 normal Hemoglobin in Red Cells of Diabetics” was published in an international journal of clinical chemistry and diagnostic laboratory medicine named Clinica Chimica Acta in October 1968. There he wrote: “In a survey carried out on 1200 patients from Tehran University Hospitals, in addition to three rare hemoglobins which are under investigation both in our department here and at the University of Cambridge, two patients also showed an abnormal fast moving hemoglobin fraction: both were suffering from diabetes mellitus.” He also added that more studies were initiated to explore the occurrence of this abnormal fraction in other diabetics and HbA1c was detected in 47 cases surveyed within the next three months, including two children with severe diabetes mellitus. In most cases, routine hematological examination according to standard methods yielded normal results (Figure 1).5 This paper has been cited 344 times.