Editorial Medical Decision Making 2020, Vol. 40(7) 857–858 Ó The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0272989X20946720 journals.sagepub.com/home/mdm In Memoriam: David Richard Rovner, MD J. Robert Beck and Arthur S. Elstein Date received: June 15, 2020; accepted: July 13, 2020 David R. Rovner, MD, a distinguished endocrinologist, medical educator, and founding member of the Society for Medical Decision Making, died May 22, 2020, at the age of 89, little more than a week after being diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer. 1 Our community has lost a great friend and mentor, whose ‘‘mastery of endocrinol- ogy, steroid biochemistry, curriculum development, the entire scope of human medicine, [was] remarkable beyond assessment.’’ 2 David Rovner was born in Philadelphia in 1930. He and his 3 siblings were raised there. Entering Temple University at the age of 16, he received an AB with dis- tinction in chemistry in 1951 and an MD in 1955. After an internal medicine residency and endocrinology fellow- ship at the University of Michigan, Rovner joined the faculty, rising to professor. There he partnered with Jerome W. Conn, the discoverer of primary hyperaldos- teronism, to elucidate the mechanisms of the renin-angio- tensin-aldosterone pathway. Their 1964 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) characterizing the difference between primary and sec- ondary aldosteronism in hypertension was identified as a JAMA Landmark Article in 1985. 3 David published many additional articles in this field and other aspects of endocrinology through the 1990s. In 1971, Rovner moved to Michigan State University (MSU) as professor and chief of the Division of Endocri- nology and Metabolism in the College of Human Medicine. There he met Arthur Elstein, PhD, who led the school’s pio- neering Office of Medical Education Research and Development (OMERAD). Arthur noted, ‘‘We soon became colleagues and friends. Together we attended the initial meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making in 1979 and many subsequent meetings.’’ David and Arthur collaborated on several studies of clinical judgment and decision making, as well as early work on introducing these concepts into the medical curriculum. 4 Several of the group’s studies were published in Medical Decision Making; Rovner served as an associate editor in the 1990s during Elstein’s tenure as editor-in-chief. In 1980, David met Margaret Holmes, PhD, a new assistant professor at OMERAD. They began to colla- borate on physician and patient decision making, to Holmes ‘‘one of the great pleasures of our lives to work together.’’ They were married in 1987. Well before that, they had made the Society their intellectual home. She joined the Board as Trustee the following year and served as president in 1991. According to his mentee and then partner Ved Gossain, MD, Rovner contributed mightily to the aca- demic environment at MSU until and after retiring from clinical practice in 1996. In 1984, he was given MSU’s Distinguished Faculty Award. Over the years David developed courses and curriculum for students, house staff, and practicing physicians. In 2017, the annual endocrinology update was named the ‘‘Dave Rovner Endocrinology Symposium’’ in his honor. After finishing his clinical practice, David maintained a wide range of activities. He served as assistant to the Dean for Technology at the College of Human Medicine and participated enthusiastically on Institutional Review Boards. Rovner continued to research and publish actively, increasingly in the burgeoning field of shared decision making. His most recent article on decision aid use in loca- lized prostate cancer, with Holmes and other society col- leagues, appeared in 2018. 5 Altogether, David authored more than 150 articles across his wide range of interests. Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA (JRB); University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA (ASE). The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi- cation of this article.