NBC Nightly News Profiles UCSF's Oldest Professor
Ephraim P. Engleman, MD, is not only UCSF’s longest tenured professor but, at 100 years of age, he still sees patients – treating their arthritis.
Ephraim P. Engleman, MD
Those distinctions have drawn the attention of the media recently, including a major piece on NBC Nightly News on July 26 that can be viewed online.
A clinical professor of medicine, Engleman directs the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis. He is a pioneer in rheumatology and has led arthritis research not only nationally but globally. He helped create the Chinese Rheumatology Association and he led the National Commission on Arthritis in the mid-1970s, a task force charged with improving the state of arthritis research.
Engleman also is a gifted violinist who in his early years played vaudeville and worked as a musician at the Fox Theater in San Jose, his hometown. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his medical degree from Columbia University.
During World War II, he served as a major and was chief of the Army’s rheumatic fever center.
He has won many awards, including the Presidential Gold Medal Award by the American College of Rheumatology, the highest national honor in the field of rheumatology, and the UCSF Medal.
Engleman earned his BA degree from Stanford University. After attending medical school at Columbia University and holding a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, he went into private practice as the first rheumatologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. He joined the faculty at UCSF in 1947.
Engleman turned 100 in March.
“I used to recommend to my patients that they do early retirement,” he says. “That was terrible advice.’’
To read the web version of the NBC story go online.