Donald W Seldin

Abstract

Pioneer in modern nephrology and the “intellectual father” of the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center. Born in Brooklyn, NY, USA, on Oct 24, 1920, he died of lymphoma on April 25, 2018, aged 97 years. In 1951, Donald Wayne Seldin left Yale University in New Haven, CT, USA, for Dallas, TX, and the fledgling campus of the Southwestern Medical School of The University of Texas (UT)—now UT Southwestern Medical Center—where students were being taught in converted Army barracks called “The Shacks”. On his way to the site, Seldin stopped at a gas station for directions, then returned when he couldn't find the school. “I came back and told the attendant that I had not seen a medical school, only shacks and garbage”, he recalled in a 2003 interview for the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings. “‘That's it’, he said.” A year later, Seldin's department of internal medicine had dwindled to but one member—himself. Rather than leave, Seldin became chair of the department, which he led for 36 years, and remained at the institution for the next seven decades. During that time, he helped turn UT Southwestern into a premier US medical school. In 1985, two of his mentees, Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the receptor for LDL cholesterol. Four other faculty members would go on to win the Nobel Prize during his time at the institution. While he worked to turn UT Southwestern into a clinical and scientific powerhouse, Seldin was instrumental in establishing nephrology as a modern medical specialty. His work on adrenal steroids was particularly important to the emerging field. In 1966, he helped to found the American Society of Nephrology, now one of the largest associations for kidney specialists in the world. Seldin eventually served as president of seven medical societies, including the American Society of Nephrology, the Association of Professors of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the International Society of Nephrology, and received six honorary degrees. Among his many awards were the 1985 George M Kober Medal from the Association of American Physicians, election to the Institute of Medicine, since renamed the National Academy of Medicine. Barry M Brenner, the Samuel A Levine Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said, “The world of academic medicine and nephrology knew Donald W Seldin as a profound thinker, scientist, and educator whose undistracted long-range vision over the past seven decades led as much to the current excellence and stature of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and affiliated hospitals as did Osler a century before in establishing and ensuring the future greatness of Johns Hopkins Medical Hospital and Medical School.” A revered teacher, Seldin was known for his pithy expressions, including: “A good medical education leaves much to be desired”; “One of the dangers of a medical education is that it leads to graduation from medical school”; and “The greatest crime is to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” Seldin was born on Coney Island, in Brooklyn, NY, USA. His Bessarabia-born father was a dentist who was wiped out in the Great Depression. A talented athlete, Seldin played basketball and ran track in high school. After graduating when he was 16 years old, he attended New York University and then Yale, where he received his medical degree in 1943. While serving in the US Army at a military hospital in Munich at the close of World War 2, Seldin was asked to testify in the case of a Nazi physician who had performed medical experiments on prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp. “Forty patients dying following liver biopsy point to medical inhumanity, not medical therapy”, Seldin later said. “He was convicted and appropriately sentenced.” Seldin married Muriel Goldberg in 1943; she died in 1994. He is survived by his second wife, Ellen Taylor, a general surgeon and former student of his at UT Southwestern whom he married in 1998, and three children, Donald Craig Seldin, Leslie Lynn Seldin, and Donna Seldin Janis. “Dr Seldin was an icon of an era”, said nephrologist Richard J Glassock, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a friend. “He was an unforgettable, dynamic beacon of passion for knowledge, intellectual honesty, and humanism whose brilliance and mentoring inspired greatness. His mark on the fabric of medicine and science is profound, indelible, and enduring.”