Jerome H. Smith

Introduction of the President, Franz Von Lichtenberg

I have known this remarkable human for 25 years. In less than five minutes, I am supposed to summarized his curriculum vitae, communicate his personality inventory, and embarrass him modestly. There are only two ways to modestly embarrass Franz: The first is to tell him the truth about himself, and the second is to give him something. I shall try to do both. Franz was born into the medical aristocracy of Vienna, Austria. His grandfather was knighted for starting the speciality of otorhinolaryngology, and his father, the first Professor of Urology at the University of Berlin, created the technique of intravenous pyelography. Franz was born in 1919 in Miskolc, Hungary. He started medical school in Vienna in 1937, but school was interrupted by the cataclysm that enveloped Europe, and Franz and his family fled, spending a year in a refugee camp in Greece. He completed his M.D. degree in Mexico City in 1945.