Hymie Gordon, MD, FRCP

Hymie Gordon, BSci, BM, BSurg, MD, FRCP, was co-founder and Co-Chair of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine at the University of Minnesota, Professor Emeritus of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and founder and director of the Mayo Clinic's world renowned program in medical genetics.

Born in the Union of South Africa on 20 September 1926, he attended the University of Cape Town, where he earned the degree of Bachelor of Sciences in medical sciences in 1946, the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery in 1950 and the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1958. The subject of his doctoral thesis was: "The Regulation of the Human Serum-Cholesterol Level."

He was an intern in the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town in 1951, and in 1952 he was resident medical officer in the Stanger Government Hospital in Natal. He was medical registrar in the Addington Hospital in Durban, South Africa, from late 1952 to 1955. In 1955 and in 1956, he was senior medical registrar in the Groote Schuur Hospital, and from 1956 to 1958, he was clinical research bursar at the University of Cape Town. In 1958 and 1959 he was a fellow of the Forman Foundation and served as research associate in the Department of Cardiology at the Postgraduate Medical School and the Hammersmith Hospital in London, England. From 1959 to 1961, he was assistant physician in medicine and instructor in biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (in 1960 as an Eli Lilly foundation Fellow).

In 1961, he returned to South Africa, where he became senior lecturer in the Department of Medicine of the University of Cape Town and senior physician in the Groote Schuur Hospital. He established a genetics teaching and research program at the University of Cape Town and a Comprehensive Care Clinic at the Groote Schuur Hospital. He was the medical officer of the Students' Health and Welfare Centres Organization, Founder and Chairman of the Medical History Club, and President of the University Cricket Club.

He joined the Mayo Clinic on the 1st of May, 1969, and was charged with the task of developing a program in medical genetics. In January of 1972, he became the first chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics and the first Professor of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Medical School. In 1988, with G.E.M. Anscombe and John M Dolan, he founded the Program in Human Rights and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. With John M Dolan, from that date, he served as Co-Chair of the Program until his death.

He wrote numerous articles and contributed to numerous publications on clinical medicine, biochemistry, epidemiology, genetics, and medical history. He was often an invited lecturer at the leading centers of learning around the planet, including the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the University of Padua, the Sorbonne in Paris, the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and most of the other London Medical Schools, and the University of Oxford. He was the David Hsia lecturer at Loyola Medical School, the Morris Fishbein Lecturer at the University of Chicago, the Kelly lecturer at Albany Medical School, the McKenzie Professor at the University of Edmonton, and the Benedict Lecturer at the American Academy of Ophthalmologists and Otorhinolaryngologists.

He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the British Interplanetary Society; and he was a member of the Genetical Society of Great Britain. After emigrating to the United States of America in 1969, he was a member of the American society for Human Genetics, the American Association for the History of Medicine, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Society of the Sigma-Xi. He served on the editorial boards of Postgraduate Medicine and of the American Journal of Medical Genetics. He was a member of the Medical Advisory Boards of the Committee for the Prevention of Jewish Genetic Diseases and of Human Life International. He was certified in Clinical Genetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics.

Dr. Gordon retired from Clinical practice in 1989 and, in the years afterward, devoted himself to three principal pursuits. First, he completed several research projects in genetics. Second, as Consultant in the History of Medicine, he composed and delivered a vast, sixty-lecture, three year lecture series titled, "History for Physicians," which covered illness, disease, medicine, and human culture from Biblical times up through the Human Genome Project. Third, as Co-Chair of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine, he spent thousands of hours planning, participating in, and leading seminars, lecture series, and other educational programs. A high point of his work with the Program in Human Rights and Medicine during those years was a highly successful six-lecture series of lectures he delivered at the University of Minnesota, in academic year 1993-94, titled "The Task of Medicine: A Rich Past and an Open Future."

Throughout the years following his retirement from clinical practice, he continued his life-long habit of travel to the centers of learning and art in Europe, Israel, and his native South Africa. Dr. Gordon died during a visit to South Africa, on the 5th of February in 1995.