| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In Memoriam |
Dr Jack Stewart Krohmer, one of the pioneers of medical physics, died on July 7, 2001. The profession of medical physics can be characterized as the application of physics principles and techniques for disease detection, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. This profession is responsible for much of the science that underlies medical specialties such as radiology, radiation oncology, and nuclear medicine. Dr Krohmer made substantial contributions in all aspects of the profession.
|
In 1946, Dr Krohmer was discharged from the army, married Doris Elaine Lyman, and entered Case Western Reserve University as a graduate student in physics. He obtained his MS degree the following year and assumed a position with the Atomic Energy Commission as a project leader in an investigation of the toxicity of thorium. For the next 10 years, he was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission Medical Research Project at Case Western Reserve, where he and his colleagues developed the strontium/yttrium 90 intraocular irradiator and an isotopic method that used phosphorus 32 for the detection of intraocular tumors. During that time, he continued to pursue his PhD degree part-time.
In 1957, Dr Krohmer entered the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where he completed the PhD degree in 1961 and was promoted to professor of radiology in physics. He also was the chief physicist for the Tom Bond Radiation Center in Fort Worth, Tex. In Dallas, Dr Krohmer and Fred Bonte, MD, chair of the Department of Radiology at University of Texas Southwestern, developed some of the earliest scintigraphic approaches to studies of the heart and liver.
In 1963, Dr Krohmer was recruited to the Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo, NY, where he served as chief physicist and research professor of biophysics at SUNY Health Science Center. After 3 years in Buffalo, he joined the Geisinger Medical Clinic in Danville, Pa, as its first physicist, with an appointment as visiting professor of physics at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. During his tenure at Geisinger, he and his family lived on a 130-acre farm, where they raised Charolais cattle. In 1972, he hosted and directed the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) summer school on nuclear medicine.
Dr Krohmer left the Geisinger Medical Clinic in 1972 to join Radiology Associates of Erie, Pa, a multispecialty group for which he planned a new clinic building and served as president for 3 years. In 1979, he joined Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich, as professor of radiology and radiation oncology and as director of its radiation physics programs. There, he started a graduate program in medical physics, which today is the largest program of its kind in the country. Dr Krohmer retired from Wayne State University in 1984, and he and his wife moved to Georgetown, Tex, to be near their children.
In the mid-1980s, Dr Krohmer accepted temporary positions at several institutions around the country, where he covered therapy physics and helped the institutions recruit permanent physicists. He also designed more radiation therapy installations than any other medical physicist in the country. He was instrumental in envisioning, planning, equipping, staffing, and operating the new Cancer Center in Georgetown. During his career, Dr Krohmer had a restless energy that yielded multiple benefits to his family, profession, and community; there was no reason to believe that his energy would have been curtailed by what some might call "retirement."
Dr Krohmer had four passions: Foremost was his devotion to family, including nine grandchildren. Second was his interest in bringing young people into the field of medical physics. In every position he held, he developed educational initiatives, including graduate programs in medical physics, instructional programs in physics for resident physicians in radiology and radiation oncology, college-based training programs for radiographers and radiation therapists, and associate training programs in physics for high school graduates. Third was his service, beginning in 1961, as an examiner in physics for the American Board of Radiology (ABR). When he was elected trustee of the ABR in 1981, he became the first nonphysician to be a trustee of any certification board sponsored by the American Board of Medical Specialties. Fourth, but certainly not least, was his devotion to the development and sustenance of collegial and productive working relationships between physicists and physicians. He stated during his acceptance speech for the AAPM Coolidge Award in 1985, "Physicists and physicians working together are much stronger than they would be working apart."
Dr Krohmer was recognized in many ways for his contributions to medical physics and medicine. He was past president and fellow of the AAPM and fellow of the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Health Physics Society. He received gold medals from the AAPM, ACR, and the Radiological Society of North America. But his greatest professional recognition is in the hearts and minds of the thousands of physicists, radiologists, radiation oncologists, radiographers, and therapists whose lives he touched during the span of his career. Their lives are better for these relationships, and somehow I believe Dr Krohmer’s life was as well.
He is survived by his wife, Doris; three children, Karen, Jack, and Candace; and nine grandchildren.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| RADIOLOGY | RADIOGRAPHICS | RSNA JOURNALS ONLINE |
