The E. J. Wylie Traveling Fellowship

Abstract

In 1987 a Traveling Fellowship named after Dr. E. Jack Wylie was established by the Society (Fig. 1). Dr. Edwin Jack Wylie was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a medical family on October 13, 1918. His father was a general practitioner who later specialized in pediatrics and practiced in San Bernardino, Calif. Dr. Wylie went to Pomona College where he became Phi Beta Kappa and, at graduation in 1939, received the Kneeland Prize in debate. He followed in his father's footsteps and studied medicine. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in the Class of 1943-A. Dr. Wylie completed his internship in surgery at New York/Cornell Medical Center and was accepted into the General Surgery Residency at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he trained under H. Glenn Bell, MD, professor and chairman, between June 1944 and September 1948. During his residency he studied with Dr. Norman Freeman, "the country's first vascular surgeon to confine his professional life to vascular surgery," who was the chief of the Vascular Surgery Clinic. Dr. Wylie was stimulated by Dr. Freeman's teachings, and, because there were no formal training opportunities available at the end of his residency, he practiced vascular surgery briefly with Dr. Freeman. Dr. Wylie then established an independent private vascular surgery practice in San Francisco, with a medical school affiliation at UCSF. Dr. Wylie's pioneering and perhaps most significant contribution was performing the first aortoiliac endarterectomy in the United States in 1951. He returned to UCSF after his discharge from the army and spent his career as an academic surgeon, rising to the rank of full professor in 1967 and vice-chairman of the department, titles that he held until his death in 1982. Dr. Wylie died after a full operating day on September 2, 1982. He was 6 weeks short of his sixty-fourth birthday. At his memorial service, his