Sylvester Sanfilippo was an American pediatrician from Edina, Minnesota, who first described a mucopolysaccharide storage disease that bears his name - Sanfilippo syndrome. Sanfilippo was born in Rochester, New York. After graduating from the University of Rochester in 1947, he moved to Salt Lake City to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of Utah. There he received a Master of Science degree in Biochemistry and earned his medical degree in 1955. He did his Pediatrics training at the University of Minnesota, interrupted by a two-year period as a pediatrician in the United States Navy Medical Corps in Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia.