A.B.Ackerman氏 ご経歴
［Philosophy of Practice of Surgical Pathology］より
Ab abbreviated biography, or even an entire curriculum vitae, of A. Bernard Ackerman would not communicate what he perceives to be the motivation that gives meaning to his life. The factual account, if brief, follows: He was born in 1936, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and went to public and private schools before going to Phillips Academy, for which he graduation in 1954. At Princeton University, he majored in religion and literature, graduated, cum laude, in 1958, receiving the Daily Princetonian Award for the “Greatest physical and moral contribution to the University by an undergraduate.” His medical education began at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and was followed by residencies in dermatology at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University, and by a fellowship in dermatopathology at Harvard. From 1969 until 1973 he was the Director of Dermatopathology at the University of Miami School of Medicine, from 1973 until 1993 the Director of Dermatopathology at New York University School of Medicine, and from 1993 until 1999 the Director of an Institute for Dermatopathology at Jefferson Medical College.
Dr. Ackerman has authored over 500 articles, over 30 chapters in books, and over 35 books, and has delivered more than 1,000 lectures throughout the world. He began two journals devoted to dermatopathology, namely The American Journal of Dermatopathology, which he edited from 1979 until 1986, and Dermatopathology: Practical & Conceptual, which he started in 1994 and continues to edit. He is also the founder of the International Society of Dermatopathology.
Dr. Ackerman has been president of the American Society of Dermatopathology and the International Society of Dermatopathology, has been awarded many honors and medals by national and international societies of dermatology, pathology, and dermatopathology, and has been the recipient of two doctorates of medicine, honoris causa, the first from the University of Giessen in Germany in 1998 and the second from the University of Patras in Greece in 1999.
In 1998, Dr. Ackerman launched Ardor Scribendi, a publishing company whose mission it is to transform the culture of medical publishing by creating books of such extraordinary substance and esthetic quality that they will delight both authors who wrote them and readers who seek to profit from them.
Working closely with students from every nook and cranny of the globe and enriching their lives through learning has been the impetus for Dr. Ackerman’s professional life and has provided him joy and satisfaction beyond measure. He taught courses in the humanities for undergraduates at New York University, among them, “Doctors as Belletrists: the influence of their medical training on their writing,” and “The history of American medicine as reflected in American literature.” He has even sought to teach children about the skin and matters that transcend it in books like “Your skin is showing” and “Your feet are showing.” It is his fellow physicians, however, who have been the chief beneficiaries of Dr. Ackerman’s distinctive mode of pedagogy. During the past 30 years, he has taught countless residents in dermatology and in pathology, and fellows in dermatopathology, as well as practicing dermatologists and general pathologists, attempting to impart to them not only lessons about principles and practice of dermatology and pathology, but a philosophy that animates that practice. In his calculus of importance, no honor or medal can compare to the pleasure and satisfaction that derives from stretching the neurons of students and from having his own neurons tickled by them.
