‘Achievement’ Is Here: SUNY Downstate Alumni Publish History of the College of Medicine
Oct 4, 2011
Downstate at 150: A Celebration of Achievement is a collection of 150 biographical essays that recount the careers and contributions of SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s many illustrious alumni and faculty. Published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the College of Medicine, it provides a mosaic of the school as seen through the achievements of its celebrated men and women.
The book’s 150 monographs were written by colleagues and former students, many of whom have made sizeable contributions of their own to science and medicine. They provide illuminating portraits of such renowned figures as Robert Austrian and Gerald Schiffman, who developed and tested pneumonia vaccine; Raymond Damadian, an inventor of magnetic resonance imaging; Samuel Kountz, pioneering African-American transplant surgeon; geneticist and National Medal of Science awardee Evelyn Witkin; and Robert Furchgott, Nobel prize-winning scientist.
“So very many people who have been at this school accomplished so much,” says the book’s editor, Martin J. Salwen, MD, distinguished service professor of pathology. Himself an alumnus, Dr. Salwen has been at Downstate long enough to have personally known many of the distinguished men and women described in his book.
“These colleagues have changed the world and the lives of many people,” he said. “They should be remembered always.”
Downstate at 150: A Celebration of Achievement is published by the Alumni Association of the College of Medicine. It is available at the campus bookstore and can be ordered by phone (718-270-2486).
For more information, visit: FSA Bookstore.
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About SUNY Downstate Medical Center
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, founded in 1860, was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient’s bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate Medical Center comprises a College of Medicine, College of Nursing, School of Health Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and a multifaceted biotechnology initiative including the Downstate Biotechnology Incubator and BioBAT for early-stage and more mature companies, respectively.
SUNY Downstate ranks twelfth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school.