am the first second-generation interventional radiologist to ive the Dotter Lecture. My mother, Renate Soulen, MD, as a Founding Fellow of the Society of Interventional adiology (SIR). She chaired the third meeting of the SIR n 1978, 20 years before I served as the Annual Meeting cientific Chair. Interventional radiology (IR) developed at several ceners around the country in the 1960s (1). Kurt Amplatz in innesota, Charles Dotter in Portland, Herb Abrams at tanford, and Cesar Gianturco in Houston were early pioeers of what would become the Western Angio group. On he East Coast, early hotbeds of IR appeared in Boston, ew York, and Baltimore, but perhaps nowhere more than n Philadelphia. Philadelphia was home to many historical firsts, inluding the first hospital (Pennsylvania Hospital, founded y Benjamin Franklin in 1751) and the first medical school n the United States (the University of Pennsylvania, 1765). y the end of the 19th century, there were six medical chools in Philadelphia, each with affiliated hospitals, and y the mid-20th century, there were about 50 metropolitanrea hospitals. Physicians at several hospitals learned the echniques of percutaneous angiography that had been deeloped in Scandinavia, and soon began to meet informally o share their experiences and learn from each other. This roup became the Philadelphia Angiography and Intervenional Radiology Society in 1964 (Fig 1), the oldest angio lub in the country, 10 years before the organization of hat is now the SIR (2).