Alice J. Adler
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Alice J. Adler, of Lexington, MA, died on February 7, 2026 at age 90.
Alice conducted pioneering biomedical research and still found time to serve for forty years as a member of Lexington Town Meeting, to sing in the Arlington-Belmont Chorale, to travel adventurously throughout the world, to attend innumerable classical music concerts, to garden—and to raise her three children and bestow attention on her colleagues, friends, and grandchildren.
Before her retirement, Alice most recently held the titles of senior scientist emerita and scientific advisor at the Schepens Eye Research Institute and associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.
She grew up in the Bronx near Van Cortlandt Park. She attended the Bronx High School of Science and then earned a chemistry degree from Barnard, a relative novelty for a young woman in 1956. Alice proceeded to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard, advised by George Kistiakowsky (of Manhattan Project fame). Continuing to garner her stellar credentials, she received postdoctoral training at MIT and Oxford. She then worked as a biochemist at Brandeis University before joining Schepens in 1976 to study potential remedies for eye diseases such as macular degeneration (the largest cause of vision loss in senior citizens).
During her career, Alice published 79 scientific articles. At Schepens, she used her creativity and an array of cutting-edge techniques to investigate the retina. When her cat dragged in a dead blue jay, Alice happily experimented on the “donated” bird eye and published the results.
Alice is survived by her longtime partner, physicist Edward S. Ginsberg, of Lexington, MA; her children, Kyle Adler, of San Carlos, CA; Andrew Adler, of Hartsdale, NY; and Carrie Adler, of Santa Cruz, CA; and her grandchildren, Chloe, Celeste, Jeremy, Eliot, Astor, and Paulie. Her husband, the MIT theoretical physicist David Adler, died in 1987. She will be dearly remembered for her kindness, support, brilliance, love of science and the arts, and spirited originality.
A service will be held on February 11, 2026 at 9:00 AM at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street, Newton, MA, interment will follow at Beth Israel Memorial Park, 190 South Street, Waltham, MA. Donations to the Schepens Eye Research Institute in Alice’s honor would be appreciated.