Homage to Prof. Dr. Othmar Schubiger, elected as Honorary Member of ESNR 2009

Abstract

Othmar Schubiger was born in 1942 in Degersheim, a village near St-Gallen in Switserland, as the son of a country general practitioner. After finishing his medical school at the University of Zurich in 1969, he became a resident at the University Hospitals of Zurich and trained consecutively one year in Pathology, Radiology and Surgery. He then definitively chose for Radiology and Neuroradiology for the three following years. After an additional year of training in Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medecine as was the custom in these years, he settled as a Senior physician in Neuroradiology at the University Hospitals In Zurich. During the following years he followed several one month visiting fellowships in different neuroradiological departments in Europe and the USA such as those of Prof. Rene Djindjan in Paris, Prof.Jacqueline Vignaud in Paris and Prof. Hans Newton in San Francisco. From 1980 to 1986 he was Chief Physician of Neuroradiology in the Cantonal Hospital of Aarau. In 1986 he was finally installed as Chief physician of the Neuroradiological and Radiological Institute of the AMI-Klinik Im Park that later became Hirslanden-Klinik Im Park in Zurich. Othmar Schubiger then developed an impressive academic CV with more then 80 publications in national and international radiological and neuroradiological journals, with more then 40 of them as a first author, mostly on neuroradiology of the pituitary gland, the spine and general diagnostic neuroradiological topics. He also wrote a book on “Die Computertomographie der Wirbelsaule“ and coedited with Anton Valavanis and Tom Naidich the book “Clinical Imaging of the Cerebellopontine Angle”. He is founding member of the Swiss Society of Neuroradiology, where he served several offices as treasurer, president and actually past-president and of the European Society of Head and Neck Radiology. He is member of the German, Austrian, European and American Society of Neuroradiology. Othmar Schubiger was elected as the Treasurer of the European Society of Neuroradiology during the XIXth annual congress of the ESNR in Bruges in 1993. As such he served for 4 consecutive terms up to 2006. During all these years Othmar Schubiger practiced his office with enthusiasm and dedication. Together with the central secretariat he followed the evolution of the membership and took care of the financial health of the society by insisting on correct and punctual payment of the annual membership fees. Above all though, Othmar Schubiger was M. Leonardi (*) Bellaria Hospital, Bologna University, Via Altura, 3, 40139 Bologna, Italy e-mail: marco.leonardi@centauro.it