Robert G. Ojemann

1992, Washington, DC

It is a special privilege to have Doctor Robert Ojemann serve as the Honored Guest of the Congress this year. In a list of distinguished individuals, Bob Ojemann is the fist Honored Guest to be a Past-President of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The enormous effort that Bob has put into this year's Honored Guest presentations will found out 25 years of service to the Congress. He has served as the Local Arrangement Chairman, Scientific Program Chairman, Editor of Clinical Neurosurgery, Secretary and ultimately as President. He also serves the Congress as well as the AANS currently as Chairman of the Joint Washington Committee.

In addition to his remarkable dedication to this organization, he as also served neurosurgery unselfishly as Chairman of the American Board of Neurological Surgery and as President of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons, the Society of University Neurosurgeons and the Society of Neurological Surgeons. His natural leadership ability has also compelled his colleagues to select Bob as the Chairman of the Research Foundation of the AANS.

Reading this list of leadership responsibilities might lead one to wonder whether such a man could possibly continue to contribute in his own hospital and to have time for his own family. Bob Ojemann in his own quiet hard working effective manner has truly been able to strike a balance between patient care, teaching, leadership and family.

As exemplified by his devotion to his wife Jean over the past 37 years, Bob is a man who finds a good thing and sticks with it. He spent eight years as an undergraduate (Phi Beta Kappa)and a medical student (AOA) at the University of Iowa and then the past 35 years on the faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Although as an innovative, creative, productive academic neurosurgeon, Bob has continually grown and changed, he has never changed his basic approach of taking the necessary time to talk in detail with each and every patient. Likewise in spine of the remarkable demands and pressures of an academic leader, Bob never failed to take the extra time required for the proper teaching of neurosurgery to residents and medical students.

Bob has published over 170 articles and book chapters and has co-authored two editions of the very popular Surgical Management of Cerebrovascular Disease. He also has co-authored the important Stereo Atlas of Operative Microneurosurgery. Through laboratory research and clinical practice, Bob has made important contributions in cerebrovascular neurosurgery, acoustic neuroma surgery, normal pressure hydrcephalus, cerebellar infarction and hemorrhage and many other areas. In the 1960's Bob helped lead he way for neurosurgeons to share an important role in extracranial cerebrovascular problems and today he leads the way to place neurosurgeons in the predominant role in hearing preservation in acoustic surgery.

Bob Ojemann is a pioneer, a leader, a teacher a family man and a consummate physician. For these reasons we are pleased that Bob will serve as this year's Honored Guest and provide an example to the next generation of neurosurgeons.