In Memoriam

Margaret J. Albrink, M.D. ’46, HS ’47, FW ’51, M.P.H. ’51, died on December 23 in Morgantown, W. Va. She was 92. Albrink was one of the rare women of her generation to pursue a career in academic medicine and was the first researcher to establish the significance of serum triglycerides in coronary artery disease. Albrink joined the Yale faculty and served as instructor in medicine from 1952 to 1958. She became assistant professor of medicine in 1958. She and her husband, Wilhelm S. Albrink, M.D., joined the faculty of the West Virginia University School of Medicine in 1961.

Robert S. Briggs, M.D. ’61, HS ’65, died of complications of Parkinson disease in Litchfield, Conn., on November 25. He was 80. After residency and a fellowship in hematology at Yale, Briggs moved to Litchfield in 1965, where he joined an internal medicine practice.

Peter R. Cunningham, M.D. ’49, HS ’50, a retired pediatrician, died on October 11 in Johnson, Vt. He was 86. After graduation, Cunningham worked at the Navy hospital in Newport, R.I., before completing his residency in pediatrics. He had pediatrics practices in Guilford and Westville, Conn., for over 30 years before retiring to Vermont in 1986.

Herbert S. Harned Jr., M.D. ’45, a retired pediatric cardiologist, died on January 7 at University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill. He was 91. During his career Harned saw the development of diagnostic and interventional cardiology as it involved children; the near-demise of rheumatic fever; the development of surgery for complex cardiac conditions; and the creation of intensive care units for newborns and children.

Louis J. Kaplan, M.A., associate dean for government and community affairs during a turbulent era in the history of the School of Medicine, died on January 8 in Springfield, Va. He was 96. Kaplan’s work helped to establish the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC) and the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Kaplan was hired as director of field services for the Connecticut Mental Health Association in 1956, where he worked with community members, government agencies, and other institutions. Kaplan also conducted a series of fundraising events with celebrities—including Vivian Vance, Lucille Ball’s best friend in the I Love Lucy series, and baseball great Jackie Robinson—to raise public awareness of mental health issues.

Kaplan became the executive director of the association in 1966 and was recruited to the planning team for the new CMHC. The following year he became assistant to Dean Frederick Redlich, M.D. Not long after, the city of New Haven was engulfed in racial riots similar to those that swept other cities at the time. Kaplan worked with community representatives and government officials to quell the violence and initiate new programs to address many of the local issues that had sparked the unrest.

Leo D. Kellerman, M.D. ’42, of Douglaston, N.Y., died of natural causes at the home of his daughter in Avon, Conn., on November 18. He was 95. The child of Russian immigrants, Kellerman practiced ophthalmology in Queens, N.Y., and volunteered his medical services in Kenya and the West Indies.

Arthur E. Laidlaw, M.D. ’39, a retired pediatrician, died on November 19 in Cooperstown, N.Y. He was 97. Laidlaw served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II, returning to practice medicine in New Hampshire and upstate New York until his retirement in 1975.

Jack Love, M.D. ’58, Ph.D., died on November 19 in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 82. After his second year of medical school, Love received a Rhodes Scholarship and studied experimental pathology at Oxford, where his thesis advisor was the Nobel laureate Sir Howard Florey, Ph.D. Love served as a thoracic surgeon in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and later was a member of the surgery faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the ucla School of Medicine.

Ellen P. MacKenzie, M.D. ’44, died on December 14 in Gretna, La. She was 92. MacKenzie opened her private practice in pediatrics in Gretna in 1949 and received psychiatric training at Louisiana State University School of Medicine and the Charity Hospital of New Orleans.

John H. Meyers, M.D. ’50, a retired dermatologist, died in Glen Cove, N.Y., on October 6. Meyers was a captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and chief of dermatology at Fort Belvoir, Va.; he later served as an adjunct professor of dermatology at New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital before becoming chief of dermatology at the Glen Cove Hospital.

Richard A. Moore, M.D. ’61, a retired pediatrician, died on November 26 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was 77. Moore was chief medical resident at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland before moving to Elyria, Ohio, where he practiced for over 40 years.

Edmund L. Piper, M.D. ’49, died on October 30 in Exeter, N.H. He was 87. Piper practiced dermatology in the Portsmouth area for most of his career.

Giles Stevens Porter, M.D. ’43, a retired general practice physician, died on November 23 in Eugene, Ore. He was 95. Porter served as a medical officer in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II. After the war, he moved to Eugene to open a general surgical practice. Porter also worked as a trauma specialist in the emergency department of Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene.

Frank H. Ruddle, Ph.D., professor emeritus of biology, died on March 10 at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was 83. Ruddle received his doctorate in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960, and completed postdoctoral work at Glasgow University. In 1961 he joined the Zoology Department (later Biology, and then Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology) and had a joint appointment in the Department of Human Genetics until his retirement in 2007. Ruddle served as chair of the Biology Department several times and held endowed chairs as the Ross G. Harrison Professor and the Sterling Professor of Biology. He was noted for his seminal studies on human gene mapping, his development of the transgenic mouse, and his work on homeobox genes, important regulators of development. His achievements were recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was the recipient of many awards, including the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the William Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics, and the 2000 Connecticut Innovations Special Achievement Award. Ruddle served on numerous NIH review boards, was president of the American Society for Cell Biology, and was editor of such scientific journals as the Journal of Experimental Zoology and Genomics.

Arlene Sweedler, M.D. ’58, died on December 17 in Urbana, Ill. She was 80. After a residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, Sweedler spent several years working in Japan. Along with her husband, Daniel, whom she met at the School of Medicine, she started a medical practice in Livermore, Calif.

Send obituary notices to Claire M. Bessinger, Yale Medicine, 1 Church Street, Suite 300, New Haven, CT 06510, or via e-mail to claire.bessinger@yale.edu