April 19, 2007
Ceremony honoring Robert Petersdorf April 30
A ceremony scheduled for April 30 will honor the late Robert G. Petersdorf, a physician and administrator who led tremendous growth of the UW Department of Medicine in the 1960s and 70s and became a national leader in academic medicine. Petersdorf died last September at age 80.
The celebration of Petersdorf’s distinguished career is scheduled from 4 to 6 p.m., Monday, April 30, in Hogness Auditorium, Room A-420 of the UW Health Sciences Center. A reception will follow the presentation. The event is free and open to all.
The presentation will cover Petersdorf’s many contributions to academic medicine through the different phases of his career, including his training at Yale University, his tenure at the UW, and his time at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). The event will include remarks from Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, dean of the UW School of Medicine; James Wallace, UW professor of medicine; Harry Kimball, senior advisor to the dean of medicine at the UW; William Bremner, the Robert G. Petersdorf Professor and Chair of Medicine at the UW; and speakers from the AAMC, Brown University, and the University of California, San Francisco.
Petersdorf served as the second chair of the Department of Medicine at the UW medical school, leading the department from 1964 to 1979. During his tenure as chair, the department grew from 69 faculty to 322, added several new divisions, and began operations in general medical clinics at the UW’s teaching hospitals. He left the UW in 1979 to become dean of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and later served as president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He was president of the AAMC from 1986 to 1994, where he made significant contributions to the nation’s medical education system.
In 1995, after retiring as president of the AAMC, Petersdorf returned to Seattle, with appointments at the VA medical center and the UW medical school. That year, the UW created the Robert G. Petersdorf Endowed Chair of Medicine, to be held by each chair of the Department of Medicine.
For more information, contact Barbara Mahoney at bmahoney@u.washington.edu or 206-543-7718. Parking for the event has been arranged for the S-1 parking lot behind the UW Health Sciences Center; check in at the gate for entry to the parking lot.
