There have been several times in my residency that I've been struck by the fact that I am at a Harvard (pronounced HA-vaaaard) program. Don't worry, there used to be "oh, shit, I'm at MIT" moments, too. I can specifically remember one of those times was during my intern rotation at Boston's Children's Hospital -- a notoriously hard rotation but also one in which we interact with some amazing faculty who don't think of themselves as amazing faculty. Surgery grand rounds that week was being given by Dr. Judah Folkman. The amazing part however, was that it wasn't really meant to be a special grand rounds -- i.e. there was no visiting professor; it wasn't someone receiving a special annual honor -- it was just normal weekly grand rounds being given by one of the faculty.
BUT, this was Judah Folkman. He gave his usual prepared grand rounds which could easily be entitled "how I discovered angiogenesis". It was fucking amazing. Here I was, tired, sleepy surgery intern. White girl from the 'burbs who went to public high school, who was a freakin' cancer survivor turned Harvard Surgery Intern listening to Judah Folkman give his usual talk "at home".
As Wikipedia so nicely states:
Between 1960 and 1962, Folkman served for the U.S. Navy, where he studied blood vessel growth. In 1971 he published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, stating that all cancer tumors were angiogenesis-dependent. Though his hypothesis was disregarded by most experts in the field at first, Folkman continued his research. After several years, his theory became widely accepted.
That was the best part of his talk -- about how he had to convince people angiogenesis was a real thing. I had this feeling as if Watson or Crick was personally telling me how no one believed there was DNA.
He died yesterday at age 74, reportedly of a heart attack.
There was always a slide in his presentation of his granddaughter reading angiogenesis journals at a very young age. May she some day fully understand what her grandfather accomplished.