2009 Gold Medal Tribute

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Theodore S. Lawrence, M.D., Ph.D., FASTRO

Tribute by Allen S. Lichter, M.D., FASTRO

It is an honor to write this tribute to Dr. Theodore Lawrence, recipient of an ASTRO Gold Medal this year. Few people have been more deserving of this recognition.

Dr. Lawrence was born in New York City. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell and his MD/PhD from Rockefeller University and Cornell Medical College. He went into internal medicine, taking his primary training at Stanford followed by his medical oncology training at the National Cancer Institute. Much to the good fortune of our specialty, he was inspired by Eli Glatstein to train in Radiation Oncology as well. Dual degreed and dual boarded, Ted went looking for work.

We were fortunate to attract Ted to join the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1987, and he has spent his entire career in Ann Arbor, quickly rising through the ranks to Professor of Radiation Oncology and then to the Chairmanship of the Department of Radiation Oncology in 1997, a post he still occupies.

It would take far too long to detail Ted's remarkable accomplishments. He is one of a rare breed: the true “triple-threat” academic physician, combining: (1) clinical excellence; (2) teaching excellence; and (3) research excellence. Any specialty has only a handful of such individuals.

Ted is an outstanding physician, caring primarily for complex patients with GI malignancy. Beyond his work in the outpatient clinic, he attends on the inpatient service of the Clinical Research Center, managing these complex hospitalized patients. He exemplifies the caring physician who can bring clinical research questions into the day-to-day life of a busy clinic. As such, he has been a role model for aspiring clinical researchers. If he had done little more than this top-flight clinical work combined with his clinical research, he would have had a stellar career. But there is more.

Dr. Lawrence is also a superb teacher. He won the Department's outstanding teacher award in 1993 and would have won it year after year if I did not insist that the house staff rotate the award to others. He has mentored dozens of undergraduates, house staff, and graduate students in his lab and supervised the clinical research efforts of a dozen more. He has lectured in settings all over the world and is a gifted speaker and a stellar representative of our field. He is now the Radiation Oncology editor of the DeVita text Principles and Practice of Oncology. If his clinical and teaching prowess were the sum total of his career, he would have a great deal to be proud of. But Ted has accomplished far more.

Dr. Lawrence is widely recognized as a brilliant translational researcher, working in the area of combined modality therapy, radiation response modifiers, as well as being a leader in moving our field into the 3D conformal and intensity modulated world. His work in liver dose escalation has redefined what radiation can do in this organ setting. In recognition of his outstanding work, Ted has been a heavily funded investigator throughout his career. He is currently contributing to eight funded grants, two as PI. He has been even more heavily funded earlier in this decade but made a conscious effort to cut down on his individual funding and spread work to others. His work has resulted in nearly 200 publications and Ted has made seminal contributions to our field. In recognition of this body of work he was elected into membership of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science in 2007.

Ted's superb clinical, teaching, and research career merits the ASTRO Gold Medal. But he has gone beyond. I speak of Ted's service to the oncology field. In having this component of his work be so outstanding, he is really a true “quadruple threat”. His work in ASTRO is well known. Ted led the Program committee for the Annual Meeting for five years. He went on to become President of the Society and Chairman of the Board of Directors. He has been on the Board of ASCO as well, and was head of the Scientific Program at the ASCO meeting in 1999. He was just elected Chair of the ASCO Nominating Committee by a vote of the membership. There are few organizations in the oncology world that have not benefitted from Ted's leadership. He was a member of the prestigious Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute, eventually Chairing the Committee for three years and is a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Kimmel Foundation.

Ted and his lovely wife, Wendy, have two terrific children- Diana and Rick. Active in the community, the family has taken the art of a capella singing to new heights, producing several recordings of their work and singing at numerous faculty gatherings and meetings.

It is nearly impossible to use too many superlatives in describing Dr. Lawrence. In each of the four legs of academic life: clinical care, teaching, research, and service, Ted's work has been exemplary. He is richly deserving of the Gold Medal and it is with no small measure of pride that I congratulate him on this well deserved recognition.