IN MEMORIAM

Philip Braunstein

Professor of Radiological Sciences, Emeritus

Irvine

1930—2004

Phillip Braunstein, M.D. died on September 22, 2004, at the age of 75, marking the end of an illustrious career in radiology and nuclear medicine. Phillip was born in Czechoslovakia in 1930, and his family immigrated to England to escape the German occupation. In England, he attended University College in London, receiving the B.Sc. in 1951, and then Kings College Medical School in Durham, receiving the M.B. and B.S. degrees in 1957. His family then moved to Canada, and Phillip decided that his final destination would be the United States. He had multiple residencies, which included orthopedics, medicine and obstetrics and gynecology, but he selected radiology as his area of prime interest, with radiology residencies and fellowships at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. He was certified in radiology by the Royal College of Physicians in Canada and the American Board of Radiology in 1969 and by the American Board of Nuclear Medicine in 1972. Phillip became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Canada), a member of the New York Board of Governors of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, consulting editor of postgraduate medicine, a reviewer for JAMA and a member of the Academic Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine. In 1981, he was a consultant to the President’s Commission on “Guideline for Recognition of Death”.

 

In the 1970s he became a tenured professor of radiology and Director of Nuclear Medicine at New York University Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital Center. In 1980 he accepted the position of professor of radiology at the University of California, Irvine and Director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, a position he held until his retirement in 1994.

 

Phillip is the author or co-author of 104 articles on nuclear medicine in national and international journals and the author of five textbook chapters in texts on nuclear medicine. His research interests were directed toward the use of simple photon emission computerized tomography to evaluate cardiac contusions and liver dysfunction and in enzyme immunoaugmentation as Hodgkin’s disease (NCI grant).

 

Phillip loved nuclear medicine and was constantly exploring its outer limits. He was an avid teacher and excellent clinician. He made significant contributions to the science of nuclear medicine and helped to develop the specialty into the status which it has today.

 

  Richard Friedenberg, M.D.