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Waldmann’s Birthday Bash Celebrates Milestones in Scientific History

Charles Marwick

On Sept. 21, several people who have worked with Thomas A. Waldmann, M.D., over the years gathered to celebrate his 70th birthday. The celebration took place at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, where Waldmann began his career in 1956. He is now chief of the metabolism branch at the National Cancer Institute. Speakers included NCI director Richard Klausner, M.D., NCI deputy director Alan Rabson, M.D., and 10 other prominent scientists.



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National Cancer Institute director Richard Klausner, M.D., gave the introductory remarks at a day-long symposium that honored the life and work of Thomas A. Waldmann, M.D. The symposium coincided with Waldmann’s 70th birthday.

 
Waldmann is a 1951 graduate of the University of Chicago, and he received a medical degree from Harvard in 1955. He came to NIH without, he says, "any research experience whatsoever," and was hired by Nathaniel Berlin, M.D., now an emeritus professor at the University of Miami and one of the day’s speakers.

The day was not only a celebration of Waldmann’s birthday and his achievements, it was also a celebration of the unique role that the NIH has played in advancing medical knowledge and influencing the treatment of disease.

When Waldmann came to the NIH in 1956, the clinical center was new. The first patient had been admitted only 3 years before. At the time, placing research laboratories across the corridor from patients’ rooms embodied a new concept in clinical research.

Former NCI director Samuel Broder, M.D., who worked with Waldmann, perhaps best expressed the thoughts of those in the audience. He showed a slide of a photograph of the staff of the metabolism branch taken 25 years ago. "There’s Tom Waldmann over there on the right," he said. "You probably don’t recognize him. He was older then. He is younger now."



             
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