~Post courtesy Stephen Novak, Head, Archives & Special Collections, Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library, Columbia University.
Taking Doctors’ Histories: Thirty Years of Interviews with VP&S Alumni
When: Wednesday, November 13: Lecture at 6pm followed by a reception & book signing
Where: Conference Room 103-A, the Knowledge Center at the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library
Hammer Building, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 701 West 168th St. at Ft. Washington Ave.
Free and open to the public; registration required: https://cumc.columbia.libcal.com/event/5795338
The Columbia University Health Sciences Library is pleased to host Peter Wortsman, long-time writer for Columbia Medicine, award-winning author of fiction, travel memoirs, stage plays, and an esteemed translator, on November 13 when he’ll recount his 31 years interviewing some of America’s most noteworthy MDs in a wide variety of fields who have made a fundamental difference in the lives of others – all graduates of Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons.
Based on his recent book, The Caring Heirs of Doctor Samuel Bard: Profiles of Selected Distinguished Graduates of Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, (Columbia University Press, 2019), Wortsman will recap the experience of interviewing such innovative thinkers and doers as Nobel laureates Baruch Blumberg and Robert Lefkowitz; late pediatrician and political activist Benjamin Spock; surgeon and NASA astronaut Story Musgrave; surgeon and former Columbia University trustee, the late Kenneth Forde; former NYC Commissioner of Health, Mary Bassett, and pediatrician-turned refugee health advisor-turned substance abuse specialist, the late Davida Coady, among many others.
In the words of one of Wortsman’s distinguished subjects, child psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Robert Coles ’54: “All interviews, one hopes, become jointly conducted.” A medical mosaic of sorts, these doctors’ histories invert the stethoscope, as it were, permitting the reader to listen in on the heartbeat of American medicine at its best.
Attendees are invited to remain for a reception and book signing by Mr. Wortsman. The lecture is free and open to the public but advance registration is required: https://cumc.columbia.libcal.com/event/5795338