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Steven H. Swerdlow, Martin A. Swerdlow, MD (1923-2012), American Journal of Clinical Pathology, Volume 139, Issue 3, March 2013, Pages 401–402, https://doi.org/10.1309/AJCP7X3MWPHGUNHZ
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A Son's Memoriam
Martin A. Swerdlow, MD, a former chair of 3 pathology departments, died from complications of Parkinson disease on November 17, 2012. Born in 1923 at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, he spoke only Yiddish until starting kindergarten. He received his BS from the University of Illinois (U of I) and had his first publication in 1944 (“Use of Synthetic Detergents in the Van Slyke Determination of Oxygen Capacity”). After graduating with honors from the U of I College of Medicine in 1947, he went to Michael Reese Hospital for a rotating internship and his pathology training, under the Viennese pathologist Otto Saphir. Halfway through his residency, he was sent to Japan for 11 months in late 1950 to direct a US Army pathology laboratory during the Korean War. After completing his residency, he served in the US Army Laboratory Services until 1954, worked several years in Kansas City, and then returned to the U of I. He left after several years to work in 2 small Chicago hospitals, still returning to the University to teach. In 1966, he returned to the U of I/Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine as professor of pathology and associate dean. He was responsible for developing a new, innovative curriculum, completed in 1972, which the dean noted in 1973 “has become well known internationally.” He went to Thailand in 1972 as a faculty member for a World Health Organization Regional Medical Teacher Training Program. After serving as chairman of pathology at Kansas City General Hospital & Medical Center and professor of pathology at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and cochairman of its Council on Curriculum from 1972 to 1974, he became chairman of pathology at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center and, as of 1975, also director for its School of Health Sciences. He was also professor of pathology and, from 1983, an associate dean at the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of Chicago. He returned to his alma mater as head of the department in 1989 and became the Frances B. Geever Professor of Pathology in 1991. He was honored as the U of I College of Medicine Alumnus of the Year (1973) and Michael Reese Hospital Alumnus of the Year (1984), and he served 2 terms as president of the Chicago Pathological/ Pathology Society (1980-1982) and received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
