There Is no Substitute for Brilliance Except for Experience

Article Outline

• Copyright

“There is no substitute for brilliance except for experience” … Judah Folkman (1933-2008).

Judah Folkman died this year at the age of 74, at a time when he was still at the peak of his creative and scientific abilities. For me, his death was a great personal loss. I first met Judah as a 3rd-year medical student when he gave a series of “practical” lectures to a group of Harvard Medical students about to start a year of principal clinical rotations. These sessions were packed with important information that enabled me personally to survive the rigors of an every-other-day, every-other-weekend internship and residency in internal medicine. I pass many of these Folkman aphorisms on to my current students and residents. Here is an example: “Respect and work closely with the floor nurses during your in-patient rotations; they know more than you do about many practical components of clinical care. You ignore their advice at your own peril.” Another one of his sagacious remarks is cited as the title of this brief editorial.

Throughout my career, I have had the good fortune to speak with Judah about a variety of academic medical topics including his pioneering research in angiogenesis. I never missed an opportunity to tell him how important his clinical aphorisms had been to my own subsequent professional development.

Judah was one of those faculty members who gave constantly and generously of his time to residents, clinicians, and laboratory colleagues at all levels of training. I once heard him tell the following anecdote about one of his own laboratory research meetings during which a young post-doc suggested a series of experiments that were promptly ridiculed by older coworkers. Judah's response was as follows: “I am passing around a piece of paper and would like everyone who thinks that the suggested experiments are a bad idea to sign their name so that they will not be included as coauthors when the article appears based on these experiments.” Needless to say, no one signed the paper.

Judah was an inspirational advocate for clinical science. He was always willing to offer time to speak to groups of potential trainees considering careers in academic medicine. Whenever I approached him to request such a talk for young clinician scientists in training, his answer was invariably yes.

On a personal note, Judah was one of the kindest, most compassionate, and skillful physicians that I have encountered in my professional life. He always had time to counsel and encourage. His performance as chief resident in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital was still a legend several years later when I was a clinical clerk in that discipline at the Massachusetts General Hospital. So, it was with great sadness that I heard of his death. It was my expectation that he would soon be a Nobel laureate. However, that is not to be. Nevertheless, in my mind he will always remain one of the most creative, intelligent, and compassionate physicians with whom I have had contact. Medicine has lost one of its greatest contributors and clinicians with his death.