April 27, 2005
Dana-Farber President emeritus David G. Nathan, MD, to receive prestigious George M. Kober Medal
David G. Nathan, MD
Dana-Farber President emeritus David G. Nathan, MD, is to receive the most distinguished award in academic internal medicine, the George M. Kober Medal, from the Association of American Physicians, the association has announced.
When presented with the award in April 2006, Nathan will become only the third physician honored with both the Kober medal and the John Howland Award of the American Pediatric Society, which he garnered in 2003 (the other two were James Gamble, MD, of Children's Hospital Boston and Helen Taussig, MD, of Johns Hopkins Medical Center). Nathan will also be Dana-Farber's first Kober medal recipient.
"An entire army of leading academic hematologists and oncologists, in both pediatrics and adult medicine, owe their career success to David Nathan," says Dana-Farber President Edward J. Benz Jr., MD. "I personally have benefited from his mentorship for over 30 years. David has made huge contributions as an investigator, but his enduring legacy is that he transformed our field by nurturing the careers of so many outstanding leaders and directing them toward areas of research and clinical care most in need of their talents. Meeting him when I was a second-year medical student was the most important and beneficial event in my entire career."
The award was named after George Kober, MD, a pioneer in public health reform in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, and recognizes physicians acknowledged as leaders in internal medicine. Previous Harvard-affiliated recipients include George Minot, MD, Eliot Joslin, MD, James Gamble, MD, Stanley Cobb, MD, William Castle, MD, George Thorn, MD, Eugene Braunwald, MD, K. Frank Austin, MD, and several others.
The Kober medal's sponsor, the Association of American Physicians, was established in 1885 to advance medical knowledge through basic and clinical science and their application to clinical practice. With about 1,000 active members and 550 emeritus and honorary members, it serves as a professional society for medicine's leading thinkers and practitioners and provides role models for upcoming generations of physicians and medical scientists.
