188 THYROID Volume 15, Number 3, 2005 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Thyroid History An Interview with Lewis E. Braverman M.D.* Terry F. Davies (TFD): Lew, thank you for agreeing to do this interview and for coming to New York. Lewis Braverman (LB): Thank you for inviting me, Terry. TFD: You have had, and continue to have, a long and productive career and have an extensive and impressive curriculum vitae. This means we can only touch on some of the high points of most interest to our readers. As Ellie Wiesel has said, “life is made up of moments and you forget everything in between.” So I want to touch on the “moments” in your thy- roid history. You were born in 1929, and you went to Milton Academy and Harvard University and then Johns Hopkins for your MD. So I assume you came from a comfortable background. Is that fair to say? LB: That is fair to say. My father was a general practitioner in Quincy, Mass- achusetts, and he went there to start his practice during the Depression years and continued to practice there for over 50 years. So we were never wealthy but we were comfortable and he was able to support us and pay for my education. I have one sister, who is married to a surgeon. So, we are a med- ical family. Incidentally, my sister has three sons, two of them are physicians and one of them is a hospital administrator, and my father in-law was also a physician/endocrinologist who published a book on the thyroid many years ago. TFD: Did you enjoy your time in medical school? LB: I went to Johns Hopkins which was a great place to be. There were only 74 of us, which was a small class that in- cluded 7 women, rather unusual in those days. Hopkins was founded by women and in the charter, I believe, there was a stipulation made that there had to be a minimum of 10% of women in the class. Of course, it’s more than 50% women now. TFD: You went next to an internship at Beth Israel in Boston, and then you joined the Army. LB: That’s right. We were all in the Berry Plan. You are too young to know this. The Berry Plan in the 1950s and 1960s was a doctor’s draft. After the regular draft stopped, there was a shortage of doctors in the military so there was a con- gressional bill, in which all doctors were obligated to serve for 2 years in some form of the military—either the Army, Navy, Air Force—or the National Institutes of Health or any of the other federal medical facilities. You had to go in some- time before you finished your training and a lot of physicians at that time went in after their internship. TFD: Where did you go? LB: We went to North Eastern France— the Alsace Lorraine area in Metz. Metz is on the German border close to Ver- dun, which was a major battlefield in World War I where millions of Allied and German soldiers died. We were sta- tioned in a small dispensary. At that time, France was a supply base for our troops stationed in Germany. So, I was a General Medical Officer after just a 1- year internship. I had to take care of everybody including kids, dependents, and deliveries. You learned fast. You became a good dermatologist and vene- real disease expert in those days. We had a great time, Mimi and me. TFD: When did you meet your wife, Mimi? LB: I met her in 1953. She was a physiology major at Vassar and then, after our marriage, came down to Baltimore to work as a technologist with Sam Asper and John Wiswell— both thyroidologists—during my fourth year of medical school. Mimi switched careers and is now an adjunct lecturer at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. TFD: Then you went into the Army and she went with you? LB: Yes, and then our first son was born. TFD: So you have a French son? LB: I have a German son. He was delivered on the other side of the border in Landstuhl. TFD: At some point you decided to become a research fellow in en- docrinology. How did that happen? *Third in a series. See references 23 and 24 .