Richard H. Egdahl ’47

Richard H. Egdahl ’47, M.D., Ph.D., of Naples, Florida, died April 30. He was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, December 13, 1926. He was assigned to Dartmouth in the Navy V-12 unit, where he participated in debating and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1950 and received a Ph.D. in physiology from the University of Minnesota in 1957. He served in the Navy from 1951 to 1953, first as chief medical officer on the USS Laertes during the Korean War and then as a staff member of the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He became director of the surgical research labs at the Medical College of Virginia. In 1964 he was appointed chairman and professor of surgery at Boston University. He served as academic vice president from 1973 until 1997. He founded the Boston University Health Policy Institute in 1973. He was the author of more than 300 scientific publications and was a respected teacher and mentor to students. He served on a number of boards and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and also served on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1980 to 1993. He is survived by his wife and four children.