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Martin A. Samuels

Martin A. Samuels, MD, DSc (hon), FAAN, MACP, FRCP, is an eminent American physician, teacher of medicine and internationally recognized expert in the field of neurology. A leading authority on the relationships between neurology and the rest of medicine, he has notably linked the nervous system with cardiac function, highlighting the mechanisms and prevention of neurogenic cardiac disease. Education and Training Born in Cleveland, Ohio on June 24, 1945, Samuels attended Cleveland Heights High School, where he was an honors graduate and president of the 3,300 student body. He was later elected to the Cleveland Heights High School Hall of Fame. Samuels credits his own childhood pediatrician in Cleveland, Dr. J.W. Epstein, with providing early inspiration for his future career path in medicine. He was also exposed to medicine, and specifically the brain-heart connection, before medical school through his cousin, Matthew Levy, a cardiovascular physiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital and Case Western Reserve Medical School. Samuels received his Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1967, and his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1971. The University of Cincinnati later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree (2005). He also received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1993. During medical school, Samuels was influenced by a number of mentors, including Benjamin Felson, Richard Vilter, Edward Gall, Roger Crafts, Evelyn Hess, Gustave Eckstein and Charles Aring, the latter of whom drew him into the field of neurology. He spent a period of time in hepatology and immunology research with the late Dame Professor Sheila Sherlock at the Royal Free Hospital in London. The work resulted in his first scientific publication in Gut showing that a serum factor present in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis was responsible for the autoimmune nature of the disease. Following medical school, Samuels trained first in internal medicine at the Boston City Hospital, serving as the medical chief resident in 1974-5, and then as a fellow in neuropathology (1975-76) and senior resident in neurology (1976-77) at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Samuels is board certified in both Internal Medicine and Neurology. Clinical Career Samuels is repeatedly cited as one of the leading clinical neurologists in the United States, and is the only neurologist cited in all editions of Castle & Connolly Best Doctors in America. Following his formal training, Samuels created a new neurology service, of which he served as chief until 1988, at the West Roxbury (MA) Veterans Administration Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospital. There he was instrumental in the merger of two VA hospitals to create the Brockton-West Roxbury VA Medical Center, a model that has since been replicated throughout the VA system. In 1988, Samuels was recruited to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital to create a Department of Neurology from a small division in the department of medicine. In 1995, the department was formally instituted, with Samuels as its founding chair. Since its launch, the relatively new department has grown to include over 250 academic appointments, including 16 full professors, six with endowed chairs, at the Harvard Medical School; over $40,000,000 in annual research support; 13 divisions; an inpatient neurology service; an epilepsy monitoring unit; a 20-bed neurological-neurosurgical intensive care unit; and ambulatory programs in all major areas of neurological medicine. Basic and clinical research from the department comprises important work on Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and cancer neurology. In addition to serving as chairman of the department, Samuels maintains an active clinical practice at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, seeing patients with complex neurological problems referred from around the world. He serves regularly as the attending neurologist for inpatient and consultation services (named the Martin A. Samuels Neurology Consultation Service in 2010) at the Brigham, and regularly provides guidance to neurology residents and students on treating the most complex problems. For his clinical accomplishments, Samuels has been honored with Membership in the American Neurological Association, Fellowship in the American Academy of Neurology, Fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians (London) and Mastership in the American College of Physicians. He has been the discusser in 12 New England Journal of Medicine Clinical Pathology Conferences. Major Research & Publications Samuels is a leading expert on the interface between neurology and the rest of medicine, including neurocardiology, neurohematology, neurohepatology, neuronephrology, neurorheumatology, and the neurological aspects of organ transplantation and acid-base and electrolyte disturbances. His most well-known intellectual contributions relate to the mechanisms and prevention of neurogenic cardiac disease. Notably, Samuels has studied “voodoo death,” or death caused by fright or intense emotion, which triggers a series of neuro-physiological changes through high levels of adrenaline. This research, the subject of Samuels’ well-known lecture “Voodoo Death Revisited: The Modern Lessons of Neurocardiology,” has been published in various medical journals and national media articles over the past 25 years, and earned Samuels the prestigious H. Houston Merritt Award from the American Academy of Neurology. Samuels was one of the first neurologists to become interested in neurologic therapeutics, and was the originator of the Manual of Neurologic Therapeutics, the most widely used reference on neurological treatment. The eighth edition of the manual, named Samuels’s Manual of Neurologic Therapeutics, was published in 2010. Samuels has also made several lecture tours in England, bringing neurological expertise to general practitioners in that country, which provided the basis for his book Shared Care in Neurology. He has served as an editorial board member of several academic medical journals including The Neurologist and European Neurology. Teaching Samuels has served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School since 1977. He was one of the first at the research-intensive Harvard Medical School to be promoted to full professor based on teacher-clinician criteria, a model now used by most medical schools. In addition to his own courses at Harvard, Samuels is the most widely seen neurologist teaching other postgraduate courses, in which he speaks on all topics in neurology. He is also the founder and ongoing director of Harvard Medical School postgraduate courses titled “Neurology for the Non-Neurologist” and “Intensive Review of Neurology,” each of which has been presented annually for over thirty years. He was the longstanding director of the Harvard Longwood Neurology Residency and is the co-founder of the Harvard Partners Neurology Residency. In addition to his teaching role at Harvard, Samuels is a frequent teacher and speaker in venues around the world. He has served as a visiting professor in a myriad of medical schools and hospitals, and has delivered lectures and continuing medical education courses at medical society meetings and medical conferences. At the national meetings of the American Academy of Neurology, Dr. Samuels created the only one-person, full-day course ever presented. He frequently delivers the update in neurology at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians, a presentation also generally published in the society journal, The Annals of Internal Medicine. He has been a major neurological contributor to the national meetings of the emergency physicians (The American College of Emergency Physicians) and the family physicians (The American Academy of Family Physicians). He delivered the Keynote Address at the first Primed conference in Houston, Texas cosponsored by Harvard and Baylor Medical Schools, and a major plenary session lecture on Neurocardiology at the 2009 World Federation of Neurological Surgery. In 2006, he received the A.B. Baker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Neurological Education from the American Academy of Neurology. Samuels has also provided education through multimedia outlets, including textbooks, audiotapes and a unique Video Textbook of Neurology for the Practicing Physician, featuring ten 90-minute video presentations spanning the field of clinical neurology. His books, The Manual of Neurological Therapeutics (eight editions), Office Practice of Neurology (two editions), Adams and Victor’s Principles of Neurology, Shared Care in Neurology, and Hospitalist Neurology are standard reading for students, residents and postgraduate physicians.

In 2010, Samuels became Director of Medical Education and Curriculum Director, Neurology for Lighthouse Learning, a company that provides continuing medical education in twelve medical specialties for physicians. Lighthouse Learning is unique in that its curricula are produced independently by leading medical experts, uninfluenced by funding from industry, which is not accepted by the company. The curricula are also uniquely designed to educate three audiences – primary care physicians, specialists and patients – together. Personal Samuels lives in Boston with his wife, Susan F. Pioli, a longtime medical publisher. He has two children, Charles L. Samuels, a mathematician specializing in number theory, and Marilyn L. Sommers, who works in human resources for the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

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