Obituary for Neil S. Cherniack, MD

Abstract

NEIL S. CHERNIACK MD, A LEADING FIGURE IN THE FIELD OF RESPIRATORY CONTROL, DIED WEDNESDAY, OCT. 21, 2009, AT THE AGE OF 78. HE WILL BE MISSED for his intellect, candor, and humor. He is survived by his wife Sandra and three children, Evan, Andrew, and Emily Cherniack Walsh; a sister, Karen Lederer, and six grandchildren, Yitzchok Zev, Ariella, Madeline, Luke, Diana, and Carolyn. Neil received his A.B. with Honors from Columbia University and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity; but scratch hard enough and he would talk about his being a writer for the Columbia Jester and an artist who in recent years started to paint in earnest and exhibited in Cleveland, Newark, New Brunswick, and Morristown, New Jersey. In between, he received a medical degree from the State University of New York and post-doctoral training both at the Cardiorespiratory Laboratory of Columbia University with an illustrious group of fellows and junior faculty, and at the University of Illinois-Chicago in infectious disease. As a captain in the US Air Force from 1958 to 1960, he worked at the Acceleration Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, as part of a project that selected the first seven Mercury astronauts. He rode the centrifuge at NASA Ames Research Center. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania and rose to the rank of Professor of Medicine and head of the pulmonary disease section in the cardiopulmonary group led by Dr. Albert Fishman. There he developed theoretical models and performed experiments that focused on the control of the mechanical properties of the thorax, and in respiratory control systems in general. After a sabbatical turn with Kurt von Euler at the Karolinska Institute where he developed experimental methods to study upper airway as well as chest wall muscle control, he moved to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine where he gathered a group of investigators in the field of regulation of respiration who went on to successfully compete for the largest NIH-NHLBI program project grant for respiratory control in the 1980s. He published articles on sleep and respiration on and off between 1979 and 2008, although most of his influential work relative to the sleep field was done in the 1980s. During his 18 years at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine he served as Dean and Vice President (1990-1995); Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine (1986-1990); Associate Dean, Division of General Medical Sciences (1983-1990); and Professor of Academic Program Development (1977-1989). In 1995 Neil “retired” and moved to northern New Jersey to be closer to family; however, he was appointed as Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Physiology and vice chairman of research at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, from 2001 to the present. He received an honorary doctoral degree from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden in 1991. He was a Josiah Macey Faculty Scholar in the department of neurophysiology at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. In the course of his career Neil traveled to six continents to teach and learn, and was the author of eight medical textbooks and more than 300 published articles Neil was a distinctive leader, and his mentorship consisted of asking leading questions and forming challenges to almost any topic. His level of thought about a problem was very high, seemingly intuitive, but based on a fairly certain degree of fact or theory. He touched many people including physicians, basic scientists, students, and administrators, often in memorable ways. He continued to be extremely active in research, having recently published an updated model for recurrent obstructive and central apneas during sleep, representing an enduring, productive collaboration with Guy Longobardo with whom he published his first models of recurrent central apneas in the 1970s. His many contributions led to national and international recognition for the neural and chemical regulation of breathing and formed today's scientific bases for understanding dyspnea, acute and chronic respiratory failure, and, especially for our field, sleep disordered breathing.