Zickler Lecture 1992
Zickler Lecture - 1992
DEPARTMENT OF PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES
About the Zickler Lecture Series / Past Zickler Lecturers
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THE FOURTH ANNUAL ZICKLER LECTURE
VICTOR A. MCKUSICK, M.D.
University Professor of Medical Genetics "THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT: BACKGROUND, STATUS, PROSPECTS, IMPLICATIONS
Thursday, September 17, 1992 Reception to follow |
About the Speaker
Victor A. McKusick was born in 1921 in Parkman, Maine . He attended Tufts College and afterwards the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he received the M.D. degree in 1946 and remained as a member of the faculty. He was appointed Professor in 1960 and served as Chairman of the Department of Medicine from 1973-1985.
Dr. McKusick is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society of Human Genetics (President, 1974). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal College of Physicians ( London ), and a corresponding member of the National Academy of Medicine (France). Dr. McKusick holds honorary degrees from Tufts University , University of Rochester , University of Aberdeen , Tel Aviv University , University of Helsinki , and Edinburgh University . He was the recipient of the John Phillips Award of the American College of Physicians, the William A. Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics, the Passano Award, and the George M. Kober medal.
Dr. McKusick's medical and scientific contributions have been mainly in the fields of cardiology and medical genetics. He contributed heavily to the classification of genetic disease; this aspect of his work is incorporated in the encyclopedic "Mendelian Inheritance in Man" first published in 1966 and now in its 10th edition. Dr. McKusick and his colleagues made several contributions towards understanding the human chromosome map and were the first to assign a specific gene to a specific autosome in man. He was a member of the NRC/NAS Committee that recommended a special effort to map and sequence the human genome. More recently, he was involved in founding the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) and now serves as its first President.
Dr. McKusick was co-founder of the Bar Harbor Course in Medical Genetics and has been its co-director since 1960. In addition to providing a genetics focus to the research, teaching and clinical programs at Johns Hopkins, Dr. McKusick is noted for his teaching with emphasis on general medicine. As Physician in Chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital , he insisted physicians should first be doctors, then specialists. His medical student teaching was patient-based, emphasizing the historical roots and traditional values of medicine.
Photography, travel, medical history, and orchid raising are his avocational interests.