John Mendelsohn, MD, president emeritus of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, died Jan. 7 at the age of 82 from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, the Houston-based institution announced Jan. 8.
Five things to know about Dr. Mendelsohn:
1. Dr. Mendelsohn served as the third president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1996 until his retirement in 2011. During the last five years of his tenure, the hospital was named the top cancer hospital in the nation by U.S. News & World Report and has since remained among the top institutions nationwide.
2. Under his leadership, MD Anderson became a degree-granting institution, conferring degrees in biomedical sciences and allied health disciplines. It also established research partnerships and affiliations with institutions in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America.
3. Before shifting his focus to healthcare leadership, Dr. Mendelsohn served as a pioneering cancer research scientist, receiving numerous awards for his work.
4. Dr. Mendelsohn earned his bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences from Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University. During his undergraduate studies, he became the first student to work in the laboratory of James Watson, PhD, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his research on DNA structures.
5. Before starting his medical school education at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Dr. Mendelsohn took a year off to study in Scotland at the University of Glasgow as a Fulbright Scholar. After medical school, he completed his internal medicine residency at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital and completed research fellowships at the National Institutes of Health and at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.