Keith A. Reimer, MD, PhD: 1945–2002

Abstract

Keith Arnold Reimer, MD, PhD, a well-known experimental cardiologist and cardiac pathologist and a Professor of Pathology at Duke University died on March 15, 2002, at the age of 56. The cause of death was metastatic carcinoma of the kidney. His disease was advanced when it was diagnosed in September of 2001, and it essentially incapacitated him for the remainder of his life. Keith was born in Beatrice, a small town in Nebraska, on April 10, 1945. He graduated from high school in a class of 7 students. Typical of Keith is the fact that by the time he had graduated, he had taken every course offered by the school except Home Economics. After graduating from high school, he attended Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, from which he graduated in 1967. While at Bethel, he met and married Susan Stuckey. Although this educational history seems an unlikely prelude to a career in science, he became a very successful scientist.⇓ I first met Keith on a spring day 34 years ago, when a young medical student with a red beard turned up in my laboratory at Northwestern University Medical School. At this time, he was finishing his second year in medical school and was searching for a laboratory in which to pursue graduate work. His aim was to enter the MD, PhD program at Northwestern. The goal of this program was to produce physicians trained as scientists. In Keith’s case, the science was experimental pathology. I questioned him carefully about why he wanted to follow a course of study that would lead him to become an expert in the field of cell injury, simply because research in cell injury was unpopular in 1968. Few physicians and even fewer scientists cared why cardiac muscle cells …