Neufeld and her Russian Jewish family emigrated to the United States from Paris in 1940; they had left Europe as refugees to escape Nazi persecution, after receiving transit visas from the Portuguese consul,
Aristides de Sousa Mendes. The family settled in New York, where she attended
Hunter College High School before graduating from
Queens College in 1948 with a
Bachelor of Science. She went on to work as a research assistant at the
Jackson Laboratory in
Bar Harbor, Maine, looking at
blood disorders in
mice. Later on, she attended graduate school at
University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Ph.D. in 1956 for her work on nucleotides and complex carbohydrates. Neufeld has been widely recognized for her contributions to science. She is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences and the
American Philosophical Society. She was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. Neufeld has been awarded the
Wolf Prize, the
Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, and was awarded the
National Medal of Science in 1994 "for her contributions to the understanding of the lysosomal storage diseases, demonstrating the strong linkage between basic and applied scientific investigation." Neufeld was a biochemist researcher at the National Institute of Health studying mucopolysaccharidosis disorders, a group of lysosomal storage disorders in which mucopolysaccharides cannot be metabolized properly in the body. Her work showed that the genetic defects observed in Hunter and Hurler syndrome are due to a degradation of mucopolysaccharides. Neufeld's work helped advance the treatment of Hurler and Hunter syndrome. In 1973, Neufeld became chief of NIH section of Human Biochemical Genetics, and in 1979, she became the chief of the Genetics and Biochemistry branch of National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes, and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIADDK). Neufeld retired in 2004 from
UCLA as Chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry, a position she occupied since 1984. == Personal life ==