Book of Profiles of Alumni: The Caring Heirs of Samuel Bard

Distinguished alumni and their family members attended a 2019 Alumni Reunion Weekend book signing of “The Caring Heirs of Doctor Samuel Bard,” published by Columbia University Press. The new anthology brings together 55 profiles of Columbia-educated doctors who made fundamental contributions to medicine, academia, public health, and society in the past 80 years. The profiles relied on first-person interviews to reveal the personal underpinnings of each of these renowned doctors’ professional achievements.

Author Peter Wortsman, who was managing editor of alumni publications at VP&S from 1987 to 2018, sums up the book: “A medical mosaic of sorts, these doctors’ histories invert the stethoscope, as it were, permitting the reader to listen in on the heartbeat of American medicine at its best.”

At the May 2019 book signing. Back row from left: Dean Lee Goldman, Thomas Morris’58, Fadlo Khuri’89, Thomas Gorham (widower of Davida Coady’65), Thomas Frieden’86, and Ron Cohen’81; Bottom row from left: Jane Blumberg (daughter of Baruch Blumberg’51), David Wu, MD (son of Clyde Wu’56), Eve Slater’71, Karen Hein’70, Suzanne Oparil’65, author Peter Wortsman, Kenneth A. Forde’59, P. Roy Vagelos’54, and Story Musgrave’64. Photo by Jenny Gorman.

Books are on sale through the Alumni Association. Inquiries can be made via email (psalumni@columbia.edu) or phone (212-305-1472).