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Joel Smilow presents Martin Kahn, MD, with NYU Langone Department of Medicine "Living Legend" award.
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On the evening of September 29, 2010, the NYU Langone Department of Medicine bestowed its inaugural Living Legend Award on Martin L. Kahn, MD. Scores of distinguished guests attended the event, held in the lobby of the Joan and Joel Smilow Research Center.
What makes a “living legend”? In the case of Martin L. Kahn, MD, it is an untiring dedication to furthering excellence in patient care, education, and research at the institution that welcomed him as a medical student more than 50 years ago. It is serving as an inspiration and role model for generations of physicians-in-training and providing the utmost in skilled and empathetic care to thousands of patients and their families. NYU Langone Dean and CEO Robert I. Grossman, MD, perhaps put it best when he presented Dr. Kahn with the 2009 Master Clinician Award and hailed his ability “to listen to each patient with the concentration and attention of someone just entering medical school, and to bring empathy as deep as his knowledge to each encounter.”
The Living Legends Award is just the latest in Dr. Kahn’s impressive collection of honors and accolades. A 1963 graduate of NYU School of Medicine, Dr. Kahn was named Senior Chief Resident in Medicine at Bellevue Hospital in 1969, and went on to be appointed Director of the Coronary Care Unit at Tisch Hospital in 1974, the Saul J. Farber Firm Chief of the Department of Medicine in 1982, and the Joel E. and Joan L. Smilow Professor of Cardiology, his current position, in 2002. In addition to the Master Clinician and Living Legend awards, Dr. Kahn received the university-wide Great Teacher Award in 1998 and the Humanism in Medicine Award from NYU School of Medicine in 2001. Other honors include the creation of the Dr. Martin L. Kahn Teaching and Learning Center in the Geraldine H. Coles Medical Science Laboratory Building in 1998, and induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society in 2004.
Maintaining “the concentration and attention of someone just entering medical school” is no mean feat after nearly 50 years of medical practice, but it is that passion for what he does that makes Dr. Kahn such an invigorating and inspiring figure to all who encounter him. His own inspiration has come from the towering clinicians and brilliant minds he has worked with throughout his NYU career—men and women like Dr. Bertha Rader, the “guardian angel” of the Bellevue cardiac clinic in the 1960s; Dr. Arthur Fox, a master clinician with, in Dr. Kahn’s words, “an encyclopedic knowledge of medicine”; and the late former dean of NYU School of Medicine, the legendary Dr. Saul Farber. “If I’m now a legend,” says Dr. Kahn, “I’m just one in a web of legends at NYU. What keeps me going is the open and collegial environment here. This is a place where the opportunities for continued intellectual growth are legion, and where I’m still learning every single day from my extraordinary colleagues, students and patients.”
To celebrate Dr. Kahn and his more than 50 years of achievement and service at NYU, the Department of Medicine is establishing the Kahn Endowment. Income generated by the fund will be used to support the recruitment and career development of the next generation of physician-scientists. The Kahn Endowment will provide benefactors with an opportunity not only to honor a beloved physician, but to invest in the careers of potential future “living legends”—young physician-scientists who share Dr. Kahn’s abiding intellectual curiosity and gifts for observation, communication, and empathy, and whose work will expand medical knowledge and transform medical practice.
As clinician, revered teacher and role model, and the recipient this year of the first NYU Langone Living Legend Award, Martin L. Kahn, MD embodies the qualities that most closely define the practice and teaching of medicine at NYU: a profound empathy for patients and a passion for advancing medical science. “Ultimately, what distinguishes and grounds NYU Langone, and the Department of Medicine in particular, is our deeply ingrained tradition of service,” observes Department of Medicine Chair Martin J. Blaser, MD, “and Martin Kahn epitomizes that. The fundamental desire to help others in a direct, hands-on way is what continues to draw medical students to the practice of internal medicine and there is no better example for them than the career of Dr. Martin Kahn.”
You can make a gift to the Kahn Endowment online or by contacting Department of Medicine Director of Development, Donna Marino, telephone: 212.404.3590.
Department of Medicine Phone: 212-263-6394
