 As a student at Andover, David Nathan wasn’t thinking doctor, he was thinking English professor. PA’s storied English don Emory Basford encouraged Nathan to pursue a career in academia, although his father and Dean of Students Grenville Benedict counseled medicine. When Nathan got to Harvard, he realized his father and Benedict were right. “I was not cut out to be an English scholar,” he says. Nathan received an M.D. degree in 1951, and, since then, pediatrics has been his life’s work. At a May 4 dinner in Seattle, the American Pediatric Society awarded Nathan the John Howland Medal, the society’s highest honor.
Nathan, who is the Robert A. Stranahan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, is also recognized internationally for his scientific and clinical contributions to the field of hematology. His work with thalassemia, a condition in which the body fails to make hemoglobin properly, has led to new techniques to treat and prevent the disease. He also initiated a bone marrow transplantation program for the treatment of inherited disorders of the blood, pioneering approaches to the transplantation management of various immune and blood deficiencies.
His long career began in internal medicine and hematology at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, which has since merged with other institutions to become the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. As chief of hematology at Children’s Hospital, also in Boston, he collaborated with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to create a combined hematology and oncology division. In 1985 he became physician-in-chief and chair of the department of medicine at Children’s Hospital, and later he was named president of Dana-Farber. He held the position until 2001.
His interest in working with ill children began early in his career. “I was drawn to pediatrics as an internist by the great Louis K. Diamond of Children’s Hospital, who sent me his most interesting patients because he valued my opinion and because I was able to do special tests with radioisotopes to make better diagnoses,” the Cambridge, Mass., resident recalls.
The author of more than 270 scientific papers, Nathan was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1990. He has been a visiting professor at teaching hospitals in several foreign countries, and he recently received an honorary degree from the University of Athens for his work on the prevention of thalassemia.
Nathan, who lives with Jean, his wife of 52 years, in Cambridge, Mass., has three children and six grandchildren. Although honored to have been chosen for the Howland Award, Nathan is quick to credit his colleagues. “I came to Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber because I was certain our program would attract the best fellows and faculty in the world,” he says. “I recognized that together we would make contributions which would improve the lives of children with very serious illnesses, and we have. We have all worked for children everywhere.”
—Paula Trespas
Parts of this story were taken from information provided by the news office at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. |
