University of California Seal

IN MEMORIAM

Daniel H. Simmons, M.D.

Professor of Medicine, Emeritus

UC Los Angeles

1919 – 2006

 

Dan Simmons was a greatly admired member of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine faculty at UCLA. He was born in New York City, received his undergraduate education (1936-41) at UCLA, where he majored in mathematics, and served as a Lieutenant in the Army Air Force during World War II. After the war, he attended medical school at the University of Southern California, receiving his M.D. degree in 1948. After serving as a medical intern at the University of Chicago, he became a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of Minnesota where he received his Ph.D. in 1953. That same year he was recruited to become Section Chief in General Medicine and Chief of the Respiratory Physiology Laboratories at the Veterans Administration Center in Los Angeles and was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine (In Residence) at UCLA, subsequently ascending the academic ladder here to become Professor of Medicine and Physiology.

 

In 1961 Dan was appointed Director of Research and Associate Chief of Medicine at the newly founded Mount Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. His pioneering efforts ultimately led to the formation of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one of the most acclaimed non-profit community hospitals in the nation and an important teaching affiliate of the UCLA School of Medicine, with major missions in patient care, teaching and research. At the behest of Dean Sherman Mellinkoff, who was determined to make the School of Medicine one of the finest in the nation, Dan was invited in 1966 to become one of the founding chiefs of the Pulmonary Division in the Department of Medicine at the Center for the Health Sciences (CHS) and promptly established its postdoctoral fellowship training program. In the mid-1960s Dan inherited a Division that essentially had only one faculty member on the CHS campus and very little laboratory space for research. At that time, Pulmonary Medicine was a poor relative compared to most of the other Divisions in the Department of Medicine. However, Dan had a vision. He soon developed a faculty that numbered in the double digits and research space occupying multiple sites within the Medical Center complex. Dan thus laid the foundation for what is today the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Hospitalists that is one of the premier divisions of respiratory medicine and its related fields in the U.S.

 

Dan’s research led to seminal advances in the fields of acid-base physiology, the pulmonary circulation and control of breathing that have been widely acclaimed. He set the highest standards for his research trainees. Projects had to be meaningful, well-designed and conducted in the most scrupulous fashion. Dan was well known for his irreproachable integrity; no research paper that includes Dan’s name will ever be withdrawn for unsubstantiated data. In addition to being a brilliant scientist, Dan was a masterful teacher, mentor and clinician whose clinical expertise led to requests for his consultative advice in the care of such international figures as Leonid Brezhnev and the wife of Menachem Begin. His clinical wisdom was brilliant and usually pithy. For example, when confronted with a situation in which restraint and simple observation were most appropriate, he would turn an old adage topsy-turvy and advise, “Just don’t do something. Stand there!” Dan’s editorial duties are also noteworthy; he was founding editor of Current Pulmonology, a popular series of monographs on current issues in pulmonary medicine and science. He also served the University, his profession and the community exceedingly well through his membership on numerous committees, advisory councils and boards of directors and his extensive editorial contributions.

 

On a personal note, Dan loved to play badminton. He was a fine player, but most remarkably, the characteristics required for success in badminton were mirrored in the way he thought: quick, agile and strategic. Above all, Dan was deeply respected for his compassionate humanity. He was the quintessence of the gentleman-scholar who led and taught through personal example and the gentle art of rational persuasion. He had an engagingly dry sense of humor that endeared him to his colleagues and students. He will be sorely missed by his many friends and colleagues within and outside the University.

 

Donald P. Tashkin, M.D.

Professor of Medicine

David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA