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OBITUARIES
Emanuel M. Papper ’35, founding chairman of the University’s department of anesthesiology, died of a cerebral hemorrhage on December 3. He was 87. A native New Yorker who had lived in Miami since 1969, Papper was a member of the College’s Board of Visitors and received the John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement in 1984. A child of immigrants, Papper was born in a Harlem tenement on July 12, 1915. He attended Boys High School in Brooklyn and secured a scholarship that helped him attend the College. After finishing his undergraduate work, Papper completed his M.D., specializing in sociology, at NYU in 1938. After spending World War II in U.S. military hospitals, he became an assistant (and later associate) professor of anesthesiology at NYU. In 1949, Papper became director of anesthesiology at P&S. When he became chairman of the new, separate department of anesthesiology on January 1, 1952, Papper was the youngest chairman of a medical department at Columbia. Under his guidance, the department set up subspecialty groups devoted to pediatrics, obstetrics and neurosurgery. Research and training were Papper’s hallmarks, and 38 of his students went on to lead anesthesiology departments at other universities. When Papper first entered the medical field, anesthesiology was a fledgling discipline, but under him, Columbia medical students were required to complete a clinical clerkship in anesthesiology, which remains in place. The department also improved by collaborating with basic science and clinical departments. Groundbreaking studies on the pharmacokinetics of anesthetic drugs, control of respiration, obstetric anesthesia and physiology of the newborn were conducted under Papper. Papper remained chairman at P&S until 1969, when he moved from Riverdale to Miami to become professor of anesthesiology, vice president for medical affairs and dean at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He retired as dean in 1981, but continued as an anesthesiology professor. Papper received honorary degrees from Columbia, the University of Vienna in Austria, the University of Turin in Italy, and the University of Uppsala in Sweden; he earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Miami in 1990. Papper is an honorary member of anesthesiology societies around the globe and the author of more than 250 scientific papers. In 1989, he was a founding member of the Columbia Presbyterian Health Sciences Advisory Council. Papper is survived by his wife of 27 years, Patricia Meyer Papper; sons, Richard Papper and Patrick Goldstein; daughter, Amy Goldstein; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. His first wife, Julia Fisher Papper, died in 1974. P.W.
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