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Herman Tuholske was born on March 27, 1848 in Meseritz, Prussia. He was educated at the Berlin Gymnasium and immigrated to the United States, settling in St. Louis in 1865. He graduated from the Missouri Medical College in 1869 and then returned to Europe for a time to complete post-graduate courses in Vienna, Berlin, London and Paris. From 1870 to 1875 Tuholske served as physician to the St. Louis City Dispensary; he was also in charge of the Quarantine Hospital during this time. In 1873 he was appointed professor of anatomy at Missouri Medical College. He became professor of surgery in 1882, a post he maintained until 1909 (Missouri Medical College was absorbed by Washington University in 1899).

In 1882, Tuholske co-founded the St. Louis Post-Graduate School of Medicine and its hospital, where he also served as professor of surgery. The school was the first of its kind in the country. From 1890 to 1902, Tuholske established and ran the St. Louis Surgical and Gynecological Hospital, a private institution attached to his home. Tuholske became the first president of the medical staff at Jewish Hospital in 1902 and served in this capacity until 1920; he was head of the hospital's Department of Surgery concurrently.

A specialist in abdominal surgery, Tuholske's accomplishments include being the first to record successful ovariotomies and developing a new method of stomach resection. Tuholske was also a leader in the campaign to make completion of a three-year medical course a prerequisite for obtaining a medical license in Missouri, and he was instrumental in the creation of the Missouri State Board of Health. Additionally, he was a founding member of the International Gynecological Association.

Born on April 21, 1925, in Berlin, Michel Ter-Pogossian was the only child of Armenian parents who had settled in Germany after escaping ethnic persecution in their homeland following World War I. The family moved to France when Michel was a young child. His fascination with science began as a youngster and was fueled by experiments involving his toy physics and chemistry kits. He later earned degrees in science from the University of Paris and from the Institute of Radium in 1943 and 1946, respectively. It was in 1946 that Ter-Pogossian came to the United States to further his education, an outgrowth of his father's concern about young Michel's involvement with the war resistance efforts in France.

Ter-Pogossian was drawn to Washington University in large part by the reputation of Arthur Holly Compton, a physicist and a Nobel laureate, who was the university's chancellor. In 1946, while studying for his degree, Ter-Pogossian worked in the Department of Physics as a research assistant. He received a master's degree in 1948 and a doctoral degree in nuclear physics in 1950. He joined the faculty of Mallinckrodt Institute in 1950 and was appointed as professor of radiation sciences in 1961. He also held a joint appointment as professor of biophysics in physiology. In 1973, he was named head of Mallinckrodt Institute's Division of Radiation Sciences, but the self-professed 'research junkie' missed devoting his full time to laboratory work. In 1990, he stepped down from his administrative duties to return to his first love: research. Ter-Pogossian assumed emeritus status in 1995. The following year, while visiting Paris, he died suddenly of a heart attack.

Among his many accomplishments, Michel Ter-Pogossian will foremost be remembered as the 'father of PET.' In the early 1970s, he led a collaborative research team of physical scientists, chemists, and physicians who developed the concept of positron emission tomography (PET). A major contribution, PET displays actual metabolic activity within different regions of organs and tissues, thereby extending scientists' and physicians' understanding of basic biological processes and providing a basis for the improved diagnosis of diseases. He played a major role in developing the concept of short-lived isotopes and in designing and constructing the first PET scanner as well as the first multislice and the first time-of-flight PET scanners.

During a career that spanned more than four decades, he earned numerous accolades for his achievements in nuclear science, including France's Gold Medal Award of the Soci't' Francaise de M'decine Nucl'aire et de Biophysique, Canada's prestigious Gairdner Award, St. Louis' Peter H. Raven Lifetime Award of the Academy of Sciences, as well as the Society of Nuclear Medicine's Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award and the Paul C. Aebersold Award. Ter-Pogossian was a member of many professional societies. He was elected in 1987 to the Institute of Medicine and served on the editorial boards of major scientific journals, including the American Journal of Roentgenology, the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, and the Journal de Biophysique & M'decine Nucl'aire.

Dr. Ter-Pogossian was a prolific author, with more than 250 papers and book chapters to his credit, and was a charter member of the American Nuclear Society and a fellow of the American Physical Society. In addition, he was a past trustee of the Academy of Sciences of St. Louis and served as an advisor for several Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health committees.

Jessie L. Ternberg, PhD, MD, received her undergraduate degree from Grinnell College in 1946 and her doctorate in biochemistry from University of Texas in 1950. During her time at Texas, she and Robert Eakin discovered the mechanism by which the vitamin B-12 is absorbed in the intestine. She received her medical degree from Washington University in 1953 and interned at Boston City Hospital after graduation. Ternberg returned to Washington University for her research fellowship and surgery residency at Barnes Hospital becoming the first female resident in surgery at Barnes Hospital and Washington University. She joined the faculty in 1959 as an instructor of surgery, eventually reaching full professorship in 1971 as professor of surgery and associate professor of surgery in pediatrics. She was the first female surgeon on the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine. In 1972, Ternberg was appointed as the chief of the newly created Division of Pediatric Surgery. She was the first woman to be elected head of the faculty council. On her retirement in 1996 she was made professor emerita of surgery and surgery in pediatrics.

Throughout her career, Ternberg made significant contributions to medicine in her research. Her best-known study is the appliance of electron spin resonance spectrometry to the investigation of free radicals. She also published A Handbook of Pediatric Surgery in 1980, which became a standard reference book for doctors due to its emphasis that children must be treated different from adults since diseases take different form in adolescents. Ternberg received wide recognition, including awards such as the Washington University Alumni Award, the International Women's Year Award for Health Care, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Woman of Achievement Award and membership in Alpha Omega Alpha. Washington University School of Medicine established the Jessie L. Ternberg Award in 1998, which is given annually to a female medical school graduate who best exemplifies Ternberg's "indomitable spirit of determination, perseverance and dedication to her patients."

Samuel Soule was a 1923 graduate of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, and a 1928 graduate of the Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his residency at Barnes Hospital, as was appointed assistant obstetrician-gynecologist in 1932. He served on the faculty of Washington University's department of obstetrics and gynecology until his retirement in 1979.
-- In Memorium SAMUEL D. SOULE, M.D. 216 Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, November-December 1986, inside front cover. https://beckerarchives.wustl.edu/RG025-S09-ss03-B65-F04-i06

Alexander C. Sonnenwirth was born in Oradea, Romania into a German-speaking Jewish family. In addition to German, Sonnenwirth learned Romanian, Hungarian, and Hebrew as a child. After completing his secondary education, Sonnenwirth went to Budapest to stay with relatives while he worked as a photographer. However, World War II shattered the world in which he and his family lived. Most of the Jews of Oradea, including Sonnenwirth's parents, were sent to death camps by the German invaders. Sonnenwirth escaped that fate, but was forced to serve in a labor gang for the duration of the war until he was rescued by Allied forces.

Immediately after the war, Sonnenwirth lived in a camp for displaced persons in Marburg, Germany. He was awarded a Hillel Scholarship which enabled him to come to the United States to study bacteriology at the University of Nebraska. After earning a Bachelor's degree in 1950, Sonnenwirth continued his studies at Purdue University where he graduated with a Master's of Science in 1953. While a student, he married Rosaline Soffer, and in 1953, the Sonnenwirths moved to St. Louis when he was appointed Assistant Director of the Division of Bacteriology at Jewish Hospital.

Sonnenwirth became the director of the division in 1955 and began doctoral studies in bacteriology at Washington University. Studying under Dr. Theodore Rosebury of the School of Dentistry, Sonnenwirth received his PhD in 1960. In addition to his duties at Jewish Hospital, Sonnenwirth served several academic appointments including Instructor of Bacteriology in the School of Dentistry (1958-1961) and as Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine for the Departments of Microbiology (1962) and Pathology (1968). In 1970, he was promoted to Associate Professor in the latter two departments and became a full Professor in 1977.

Sonnenwirth's scientific contributions included both 'pure' research and innovation in clinical technology. His chief research specialty was the study of anaerobic gram-negative bacilli. His enormous knowledge in this and related fields was expressed in the publication of over one hundred scientific papers and summarized in his editorship of the sixth, seventh, and eighth editions of Gradwohl's Clinical Laboratory Methods and Diagnosis (1963, 1970, 1980). He and his colleagues of the Microbiology Laboratory at Jewish Hospital were leading evaluators of new equipment and procedures, particularly of automated testing instrumentation.

Sonnenwirth was for many years a key participant in professional associations of microbiologists and their conferences, symposiums, and seminars. This activity included extensive travel within the U.S. and abroad. Sonnenwirth is remembered for his services to the American Society for Microbiology, having been among the organizers of the Clinical Microbiology Section in 1963 and its chairman from 1970 to 1973. Sonnenwirth was chosen by the American Society for Microbiology to receive its highest professional recognition, the Becton-Dickinson Award, in 1984.

Greenfield Sluder was an ear, nose, and throat surgeon based in St. Louis. He is best known for popularizing the use of subtotal tonsillectomy in 1920. Sluder earned his doctorate from Washington University in 1888 and continued his studies in Europe for several more years. He joined the Washington University staff in 1891 as an instructor of clinical medicine, rising through the ranks to become clinical professor and head of the Department of Laryngology and Rhinology in 1906. By the time of his death, Sluder had written two books and nearly 70 papers.

Ben Senturia (1910-1982) was an otolaryngologist who began his practice in St. Louis in 1939. Senturia was educated at Washington University earning his A.B. in 1931 and his M.D. in 1935. After an internship at the St. Louis City Hospital and an additional internship and residency in otolaryngology at the McMillan-Barnes Hospital, Dr. Senturia joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1938. He also worked with closely with Max Goldstein and Dr. Richard Silverman at the Central Institute for the Deaf. His World War II service was with the U.S. Air Force in the research section of the School of Aviation Medicine where he conducted major investigation in noise induced hearing loss and in the infections of the external ear.

After the war, Senturia taught medical students and graduate students and conducted major research programs in otolaryngology. His clinical and basic research in external otitis resulted in two textbooks and over 80 scientific papers. In 1952, he became director of the department of otolaryngology at the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis. He was also president of the American Otological Society from 1972-1973. Arthur Proetz appointed him associate editor of the Annals of Otology, Rhinology, and Laryngology in 1958 and he became its editor in 1966.

Gordon Hatler Scott (1901-1970) was born in Winfield, Kansas on April 10, 1901. He received his Ph.D. in anatomy at the University of Minnesota in 1926. Upon graduation, Scott worked at Loyola University in Chicago as an Assistant Professor of Anatomy for two years. He then moved to New York City to assist E.V. Cowdry with cytological studies of malaria at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.

When Cowdry was selected to be the head of the cytology program at Washington University in 1928, Scott followed Cowdry and was appointed Assistant Professor of Cytology at Washington University. Scott held this position until 1931, when he was promoted to Associate Professor of Cytology (1931-1941), and later Associate Professor of Histology (1941-1942). Scott researched medical physics and developed many physical methods of study for biology. He is credited with creating the nation's first electron microscope, which is now located in the Bernard Becker Medical Library.

Scott left Washington University to become the head of the anatomy department at the University of Southern California. In 1945 he became the Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at Wayne State University. He was promoted to Dean of the School of Medicine in 1950, where he pushed to increase enrollment and oversaw a significant expansion of the school's facilities.

Dr. Scott held a number of administrative positions in professional organizations and he was presented with several honors throughout his career. He was a member of the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection in 1930, served as vice president of the American Association of Medical Colleges in 1957, and was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Henry Gerard Schwartz (1909-1998) is remembered as one most important and influential American figures in the field of neurosurgery. His primary research interests were focused in anatomy, surgery, and physiology of the nervous system. Dr. Schwartz made important clinical contributions to neurosurgery in pain, intracranial aneurysms, and pituitary and cerbellopontine angle tumors. He designed one of the first spring vascular clips for aneurysm surgery and refined open surgical techniques for cervical cordotomy.

Born in New York City on March 11, 1909, he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1928 from Princeton University. He then earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. Dr. Schwartz began his career as a surgical house officer at Johns Hopkins. He then studied anatomy and neuroanatomy at Harvard University for three years as a National Research Council fellow. Upon completion of his fellowship, he served as an anatomy instructor at Harvard Medical School before joining Washington University School of Medicine in 1936.

Dr. Schwartz spent the larger part of his career at Washington University, serving in a number of different positions: Fellow in Neurosurgery (1936-1937), Instructor (1937-1942), Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery (1942-1945), Associate Professor (1945-1946), Professor (1946-1970), Chairman of the Division of Neurological Surgery (1946-1974), and August A. Busch, Jr. Professor of Neurological Surgery (1970-1985). In addition to his academic appointments, Dr. Schwartz was acting Surgeon-in-Chief at Barnes Hospital from 1965 to 1967 and Chief Neurosurgeon at Barnes and St. Louis Children's Hospital from 1946 to 1974. As a well-respected educator, his training program attracted many talented students to Washington University.

During World War II, Dr. Schwartz served as Assistant Chief of Surgery and Chief of Neurosurgery in the U.S. Army's 21st General Hospital. During his service, he developed a method for handling wounds to the head and nerves that became standard procedure for the military. For this accomplishment, he received the prestigious Legion of Merit in 1945. Dr. Schwartz was honored numerous times throughout his career for his contributions to neurosurgery. Among his many other awards are the Harvey Cushing Medal from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Distinguished Service Award from the American Board of Neurological Surgery.

In 1985, Dr. Schwartz was elected Honorary President of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. He also served as Chairman of the American Board of Neurological Surgery (1968-1970) and as President of the Southern Neurosurgical Society (1952-1953), the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons (1967-1968), and the Society of Neurological Surgeons (1968-1969).

Beatrice F. Schulz was in the first class to graduate from the Barnes Hospital School for Physical Therapy Technicians in 1942. Before her switch to physical therapy, she was an occupational therapist who graduated from the St. Louis College of Occupational Therapy in 1934. With the P.T. faculty and staff called to active duty in World War II, she became technical director and chief physical therapist the day after she graduated from the Barnes Hospital program.

Schulz remained technical director when the Barnes School's certificate program was replaced by Washington University's baccalaureate course in Physical Therapy in 1948. That year, she also joined the faculty of the Washington University School of Medicine where she had enormous influence with physical therapy students for the next 30 years. Schulz served as director of the Physical Therapy department from 1955 until her retirement in June 1977.

Ernest Sachs, MD (1879-1958) was born in New York City to a family gifted in the arts, steeped in academia, and endowed with wealth. Together with Harvey Cushing, he is regarded as one of the founders of American neurosurgery. His father was a classical scholar and a founder of the Teachers College at Columbia University, his uncle was a neurologist noted for the description of Tay-Sachs disease, and his cousin was professor of fine arts at Harvard University. Sachs himself would learn the cello at the age of six.

Sachs attended the newly founded Johns Hopkins Medical School and graduated with high honors in 1904. Following his medical degree, he spent three years as a house officer at Mount Sinai in New York, before pursuing two additional years of study in Vienna, Berlin, and London. Recruited to Washington University after the reorganization of the School of Medicine, Sachs became the pioneering neurosurgeon west of the Mississippi. In 1919, Sachs was named Professor of Neurological Surgery, the first surgeon in the United States with such an appointment.

Known to be forceful, demanding, and a perfectionist, Sachs developed one of the most outstanding neurosurgical centers in the world at Washington University. Dedicated to the care of his patients, he could be gracious, thoughtful, and even gentle. He would also rightfully earn a fearsome, legendary status, among his many students as being intimidating, caustic, and belligerent. For thirty-five years he held his infamous twelve o'clock clinic for the junior medical students in the Barnes Hospital surgical amphitheater know as "The Pit."

In 1949, Sachs abruptly resigned his emeritus professorship at Washington University to accept a position in retirement at Yale University.

Steven J. Rose (1939-1989); was Associate Professor and Director of of the Program in Physical Therapy at Washington University School of Medicine; received his bachelor's degree in physical therapy from Ithaca College/Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a doctorate in neuroscience from Yeshiva University/Albert Einstein College of Medicine; served as an Associate Editor and then as Editor of Physical Therapy from 1986 until his death in 1989.
--Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis website, viewed May 9, 2016

Lee Robins was born Fannie Lee Nelken in New Orleans. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University's Radcliffe College in 1951 after training in the 1940s under Talcott Parsons. During grad school at Harvard, she met and married Eli Robins, one of the leaders of the new biological psychiatry who joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1949.

Robins joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1954 as research assistant in psychiatry and by 1966 had risen to full research professor of sociology in psychiatry. From 1987-1997, she led the master's program in psychiatric epidemiology at the School of Medicine. She was also professor of sociolgy on the Danforth campus. A prolific writer, she authored almost 250 papers and enjoyed nearly continuous grant funding throughout her career. She was the recipient of nearly 30 awards including top honors in the fields of addiction, criminology and public health.

Her first major study in the middle 1950s was a long term follow-up of children and adolescents treated in the Saint Louis Child Guidance Clinic. She and psychiatrist Patricia O"Neal saved the clinic's patient records from destruction and together they located 95% or 524 men seen at the clinic as children from 1924-1929 along with 100 controls from the same neighborhood. The resulting book, Deviant children grown up, helped move behavioral science from speculation based on anecdote into empirical science based on objective patient records.

The Nixon White House selected her as principal investigator on a report on heroin and narcotics use and addiction among Vietnam veterans in the early 1970s. She followed a large random sample of returning soldiers. She found drug use and addiction remained constant at about 1% and that 'most of the kids who used heroin in Vietnam, ...came home, didn't use it anymore and had no problems.'

Late in the 1970s, Robins and her colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry developed the Renard Diagnostic Interview, a assessment tool based on the Feighner psychiatric criteria. Darrell Regier of the National Institute of Mental Health asked her to develop a similar structured interview for the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Surveys (ECA) based on the DSM-III criteria. The result was the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS). The goal of the ECA was to assess the mental health of large population samples and the very structured DIS allowed trained non-clinicians to do the interviews effectively. St. Louis was selected as one of five interview sites. The high visibility of the ECA study encouraged epidemiologists world wide to replicate ECA in their own countries. These replications allowed more precise cross-national comparisons and encouraged Robins and others to develop the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI).

*Source: Helzer, John, "Lee Nelken Robins: 29 August 1922-25 September 2009," Addiction, Volume 105, Issue 10, pages 1856-1858 (October 2010).

Eli Robins received his medical degree from Harvard University University Medical School in 1943 and did his residency in psychiatry. In 1949-1951, he learned from Oliver Lowry about brain biochemistry at Washington University School of Medicine as a US Public Health Service fellow. He joined the faculty and administration of Washington University School of Medicine in 1951, serving as: instructor in neuropsychiatry (1951-1953), assistant professor (1953-1956), associate professor (1956-1958), professor of (1958-1966), Wallace Renard Professor of psychiatry (1966-), and head of the psychiatry department (1963-1975).

Robins was affiliated with Barnes Hospital from 1951-1994 and for many years psychiatrist in chief (1963-1975). He was at the forefront of American psychiatric medicine bringing scientific research from the Freudian approach that dominated the 1940s to an empirical scientific approach based on diagnostic criteria. Modern research into biomedical and social factors in psychiatric disorders followed the agreement of clinicians and researchers on diagnostic criteria. Eli Robin's own research interest was in chemical aspects of brain function and psychiatric illness, specifically the causes of suicide and the neurochemistry of psychiatric disease such as manic depressive disorders, depression, schizophrenia, and multiple sclerosis.

Sources: Amer. Men & Women Sci, 13th ed. 1976 ; Bauer, Dale R., "A letter from the publisher," Medical World News, March 29, 1970; Washington University Record, January 19, 1975; "Eli and Lee Robins," Washington University Magazine, Fall 1973.

Dr. D.C. Rao, Professor of Biostatistics, joined the Division of Biostatistics as its Director in 1980. He holds joint appointments as professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Genetics, and as adjunct professor in the Department of Mathematics. He stepped down as the Division Director at the end of 2019. He is a member and Past-President of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society (1996) and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the society’s journal, Genetic Epidemiology (1984-91).

Dr. Rao’s overall research interest is the genetic dissection of common complex traits, including GxE interactions in cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and their co-morbidities. He has published over 700 research articles and is a co-author of six books. He has held many research and training grants as PI, including Coordinating Centers and Data Coordinating Centers for several multicenter family and genetic studies.

Dr. Rao is active in training and mentoring activities: Director of the Biostatistics Education Programs, a Summer Institute Program (PRIDE), and a Post-Doctoral Training Grant.

He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, India, including a Ph.D. in statistical genetics in 1971.

Division of Bistatistics Faculty Page, accessed22 February 2020. https://biostatistics.wustl.edu/faculty-staff/d-c-rao/

Edgar Monsanto Queeny was an American industrialist. He was the son of Olga Mendez Monsanto and John Francis Queeny, the founder of Monsanto. He followed his father as chairman of the Monsanto corporation from 1928 until his retirement in 1960. He then became the chair of the board of trustees of Barnes Hospital. His efforts to modernize the hospital and the Washington University Medical Center led to the construction of Queeny Tower as well as a dispute between the hospital and Washington University. The resolution of this dispute led to closer ties between the School of Medicine and its associated hospitals. He was also a conservationist and amateur naturalist and photographer.

Jacob G. Probstein was a former chief of surgery at Jewish Hospital who is best known as the last team doctor for the St. Louis Browns and the first team doctor for the St. Louis Blues. After he was hired by the Blues in 1967, Probstein became a hockey fan and was a fixture at Blues hockey games well into his 90s, missing no more than a dozen home games each season until the last two years of his life prior to his death in 1993. Probstein also helped found the Missouri Cancer Commission in 1962 and wrote a book on the treatment of pancreatitis.