Soma Weisswas born in the town of Bestercze, Hungary, the elder of two sons of Jewish parents, Ignac and Leah (Kahan) Weiss. His father, an architect and engineer, was decorated by Emperor Franz Josef for his achievements in constructing bridges and roads in Hungary. Soma's brother, Oscar, became a geophysicist in England and South Africa.
In 1916 Soma Weiss entered the Royal Hungarian University in Budapest, where he studied physiology and biochemistry under Paul Hari and served (1918 - 20) as demonstrator and instructor in biochemistry. Weiss enrolled at Columbia University, receiving the A. B. degree in 1921, and then entered the Cornell University Medical School. He received the M. D. degree in 1923.
In 1919 he published a paper on respiratory metabolism that attracted favorable attention in the United States. Since the political climate prevailing in Hungary after the end of World War I was not favorable to research, Weiss came to the United States in 1920. A letter of introduction he brought with him led to his meeting the Cornell physiologist Eugene F. DuBois, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. To support himself, he served as assistant in the pharmacological laboratory and carried out basic research, with Robert A. Hatcher, on the emetic action of digitalis and other drugs; an interest in pharmacology and pharmacotherapy persisted throughout his professional life. Weiss spent two years as an intern at the Bellevue Hospital in New York, where he continued his research in pharmacology and became outstanding for the accuracy of his diagnoses. In 1925 he moved to Boston, as a research fellow in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and assistant at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory of the Boston City Hospital; he was appointed director of the second and fourth medical services at the City Hospital in 1932. In his fourteen years at the Thorndike Laboratory, Weiss and his associates published some 150 papers. With Herrman L. Blumgart he pioneered in the biological use of radioactive tracers and published classic papers on the velocity of blood flow in human beings. With Frederick Parker he wrote the definitive description of the changes in the pulmonary vessels caused by mitral stenosis and the changes in renal vessels caused by pyelonephritis. He contributed greatly to knowledge of the pathophysiology of left ventricular failure and acute pulmonary edema. He was interested in the autonomic nervous system and, in a series of papers with James P. Baker, Eugene B. Ferris, Jr. , and Richard B. Capps, described a number of clinical syndromes that are produced by abnormalities in portions of the autonomic nervous system. His work on the hypersensitive carotid sinus syndrome led him to an increased concern for the causes of syncope, shock, and sudden death, and he made major contributions to their pathophysiology. In 1936, with Robert W. Wilkins, he wrote the definitive paper on the relation between cardiovascular disturbances and vitamin deficiencies, and showed that heart failure in patients suffering from beri-beri was caused by a deficiency of thiamine and hence could be quickly relieved. In collaboration with Lewis Dexter, he also published a monograph reporting an elaborate investigation into toxemia of pregnancy. At the Harvard Medical School, Weiss meanwhile had gained rapid academic advancement, becoming instructor (1927 - 29), assistant professor (1929 - 32), and associate professor of medicine (1932 - 39). In 1939 he was appointed Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic, and in the same year he left the Thorndike to become physician-in-chief of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Thus in nineteen years he had risen from an unknown immigrant applying for his first citizenship papers to the holder of the senior chair of medicine in a leading university. At the Brigham, Weiss gave new life to its medical research and encouraged basic work in biochemistry and pharmacology. He implemented a plan of cooperation among the personnel of hospital clinics, the pharmacologists of the Harvard Medical School, and the organic chemists at Harvard University to advance the treatment of disease. This group introduced into clinical medicine the effective use of chemotherapy for thyrotoxicosis. During his three years at the Brigham, Weiss published some thirty papers, which included the first description of scleroderma heart disease. Weiss served on the committee for the revision of the United States Pharmacopoeia, and on the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association. He was also a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Heart Association, and was a fellow of the American College of Physicians. His intellectual and scientific gifts earned the respect of his colleagues, and his extraordinary charm won their affection and that of his patients. Weiss died at his home in Cambridge, Massachussets, a few days after his forty-third birthday from the rupture of a congenital intracranial aneurysm and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge.
On October 6, 1928, Weiss married Elizabeth Sachs, daughter of Paul J. Sachs, professor of fine arts at Harvard. They had three children: Paul Sachs, Robert Hatcher, and Louise.
