By Lowell Brown, Director of Communications
Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society
Lancaster, Pa., April 10, 2012—A leader in American medicine, Dr. Joseph B. Martin will speak briefly and sign copies of his new book, Alfalfa to Ivy: Memoir of a Harvard Medical School Dean, at two Lancaster locations: Landis Homes Retirement Community on Thursday, April 19, at 3:00 PM, and Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society on Friday, April 20, at 7:00 PM.
Alfalfa to Ivy chronicles Martin’s journey from a Canadian Mennonite farm family to the highest levels of academic leadership.
“This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the radical evolution of medicine in the United States that began in the second half of the twentieth century,” said Dr. Eric Kandel, 2000 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
Martin grew up near the village of Duchess in southern Alberta, Canada. He was the first person in his family to attend college. He received a B.S. from Eastern Mennonite College, an M.D. at the University of Alberta and a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester.
He chaired the department of neurology at McGill University in 1977. As chief of neurology services at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1980, he established the Huntington Disease Center, which was instrumental in identifying the gene responsible for that disorder.
Martin became dean of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine in 1989, where he inaugurated the W. M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neurosciences—dedicated to combining studies of the brain and behavior—and the Gladstone Institute for Virology and Immunology for the research of AIDS.
He was appointed dean of the faculty of medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1997. Under his leadership in 2003, the Harvard Medical School formed the Department of Systems Biology, one of the first department-level systems biology programs in the U.S.
Alfalfa to Ivy: Memoir of a Harvard Medical School Dean is available from Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society for $34.95. The Society is located at 2215 Millstream Road, Lancaster, along Lincoln Highway East. Martin will sign books there at 7:00 PM, Friday, April 20.
Martin will also appear at 3:00 PM on Thursday, April 19, in the Westview Community Room at Landis Homes Retirement Community, 1001 East Oregon Road, Lititz, Pa. Contact (717) 569-3271 x3067
