Former AAMI Chair and President Harold Laufman, MD, has been an accomplished author, artist, musician, and surgeon during his near-century of life. Recently, AAMI News met with this extraordinary man at his Manhattan apartment just before his 97th birthday, to discuss his life’s journey and some of the wisdom he has gained about aging with dignity.

NEW YORK CITY — Even before Harold Laufman entered grade school, he remembers seeing his older sisters doing homework, and he immediately knew he no longer had any use for his toys. So he announced to his parents that he, too, would like to do homework.

“Ok, here is a pad and a crayon,” his mother replied. “Do homework.”

DID YOU KNOW?

In 1975 AAMI created a award to honor Harold Laufman. Now known as the AAMI Foundation Laufman-Greatbatch Prize, it honors an individual or group that has made a unique and significant contribution to the advancement of medical instrumentation. Learn more about this award.

This early intellectual curiosity set the stage for Laufman’s brilliant life and career. Some 90 years later, “I still like to do homework,” he says.

In fact, at age 96, he is preparing to write a new book about thriving after the age of 95.

So just how does a bright young child become a success in the disparate worlds of writing, art, music, and surgery?

“I drove my parents crazy,” he recalls. “I wanted to do so many things. One day I decided I wanted to take apart a clock. My parents agreed that as long as I wouldn’t touch any of the clocks in the house, they’d buy me an alarm clock to take apart. So they bought me one and I took it apart, which satisfied my curiosity about why it chimed at certain times.

“By age 8, I was taking violin lessons, and I quickly became proficient at the violin. When I was bored at school, I would draw sketches and cartoons in my notebook. My mother saw this and recognized that I had artistic talents.”

By the third grade, even Laufman’s teachers noted his talents for drawing.

His big break came at the age of 14, when he submitted cartoons to an executive at the Chicago Daily News. The executive agreed to pay Laufman five dollars per piece.

“I realized I could help support my family by doing cartoons,” he says.“At that age, I felt like a millionaire.”

All the while, Laufman’s interest and proficiency with the violin grew, and by the age of 15 he was playing concertos with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

A Budding Interest in Science

During his college years at the University of Chicago, he served as the art editor of the college’s magazine. But because of his varied interests, Laufman struggled to find his true career calling.“I was attracted to teachers,” he says.“I wanted to be what they were. When I took chemistry, I wanted to be a chemist. When I took biology, I wanted to pursue biology.”

But Laufman became so curious about everything he studied that his classroom instruction just wasn’t enough for him. “I had a hunger for knowledge, and I wanted to delve into the subjects further than we were being taught in class,” he says. Ultimately, he elected to go to medical school, and received a full scholarship as a result of his outstanding academic record.

A Career in Surgery and Research

Laufman became a surgeon after graduating from Rush Medical College of the University of Chicago and completing postgraduate work at Northwestern University Medical School. And in 1940, he was appointed to Northwestern’s faculty as a clinical instructor.

This faculty position provided him with an ideal opportunity to satisfy his growing fascination with research, or“homework.”

All told, Laufman has published more than 300 scientific articles, five books, and numerous textbook chapters on subjects ranging from surgical infection to hypothermia.

Asked what piece of his research he is proudest of, Laufman notes that his body of research fits together like a puzzle, and that a finding he might be very proud of “would probably seem very boring to most people,” he says.“But one finding leads to another, and another.”

In Laufman’s career, one thing always has led to another.

The Renaissance Man

Laufman chuckles when he recalls the day that his mother almost sounded disappointed when she found out he would be a surgeon. “I always thought you’d be a musician or an artist,” she told him.

But Laufman has had the opportunity to blend his life’s passions in ways that most people only dream of. He never stopped sketching pictures during his free time, and during medical school he began creating medical art. By the time he graduated, he had provided medical or anatomical illustrations for more than 70 articles and books.

In his 2006 autobiography, One Man’s Century with Pen, Brush, Fiddle and Scalpel, Laufman notes that graphic arts and medicine are in fact intertwined.

“In recent decades a growing number of medical schools in the United States have initiated art-appreciation courses, not only for their educational value in the humanities, but actually to aid medical students in sharpening their observational skills in examining patients,” Laufman writes.

But he would eventually take his medical art a step further. While stationed in Italy during World War II, during the lull between V-E Day and V-J Day, Laufman decided to create several impressionistic oil paintings of human disease.

He made paintings that captured the emotion and feelings he associated with the common cold, cancer, scarlet fever, diphtheria, syphilis, tuberculosis, jaundice, inflammation, and coronary artery disease. The paintings would later be exhibited at an art gallery in Chicago, and later in a medical museum.

His AAMI Leadership

During his surgical career, Laufman had always considered ways of making life easier for surgeons in the operating room, which could in turn improve patient safety and surgical outcomes.

It was this interest that led to his involvement with AAMI in the early 1970s. Laufman served as AAMI’s president in 1974 and 1975, and as AAMI’s chair in 1976 and 1977.

At the time, he was director of surgery at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in the Bronx, NY. “There was a rush of technology into the field at that time,” he recalls. “But there was no one to repair this equipment. No one knew how to get along if a device went down.”

So Laufman and his colleagues established an internship program through which students from Brooklyn’s Polytechnic Institute of New York could help manage medical technology safely and economically.

“Many of these interns became biomedical equipment technicians (BMETs),” he says. “The name BMET didn’t mean anything to anyone at the time. But through AAMI, it began to mean something.”

In recent years, Laufman had been seeing a nephrologist for a kidney condition. “The nephrologist asked me if I was familiar with AAMI,” Laufman recalls. “He told me, ‘my wife is a member of AAMI, and she mentioned you before you ever became a patient of mine.’ I got a kick out of hearing that.”

Harold Laufman Today

After his “retirement,” Laufman founded a company called Harold Laufman Associates, Inc. (HLA Systems) at age 82. The goal of his company was to help healthcare facilities plan, equip, and operate their surgical suites in an ideal manner.

This new career offered Laufman the opportunity to travel and provide consulting to hospitals in all corners of the world. And as you might guess, as part of his work at HLA Systems, he drew sketches of his prototype surgical environment.

As he prepares to write his book about how to live a fulfilling life after age 95, Laufman says that keeping busy is critical for people of advanced age. And he practices what he preaches.

“You’ve got to keep a daily agenda,” he says.

Every Sunday at 11 am, he pulls out his violin and plays for two hours. And although his eyesight no longer allows him to read music, he plays along by ear with a CD. “My family knows not to call me during that time,” he says.

From his apartment in Manhattan, he walks two miles every day beginning at 3 pm — without using a cane. “If I walk up Madison Ave, there is a wonderful array of windows, shops, and people,” he says. “The doormen along my walk all know me, and they just call me ‘Doc.’

“If I walk to the West, I have Central Park, and to the East I have the river. I typically choose my direction based on what errands I need to do that day. And whichever way I go, there is something of interest to see.”

He also keeps himself mentally sharp by keeping up with medical journals and other reading materials. He is a regular patron of the New York Philharmonic and attends their Thursday night concerts.

Indeed, Laufman maintains that the key to avoiding the despair that sometimes accompanies aging is to keep busy. And of course, he still loves to do his homework.

AAMI News: January 2009, Vol. 44, No. 1

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