Kenneth Ludmerer Receives Prestigious AAMC Award

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
Monday, 1 December 2003

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has named Kenneth M. Ludmerer, M.D., professor of medicine and professor of history in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, the recipient of the 2003 Abraham Flexner Award for Distinguished Service to Medical Education.

The prestigious award, which recognizes extraordinary individual contributions to medical schools and the national medical education community, was announced in November at the AAMC's 114th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

As one of the foremost authorities on medical education, Ludmerer authored Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education and Time to Heal: Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care. The Pulitzer Prize– and Bancroft Prize-nominated books highlight the necessary professional and social conditions needed for medical education to progress.

These published works inspired the concept of the "Academy of Medical Educators" as a means for medical schools to support and strengthen teaching missions and to identify forces that have affected academic medicine for the past 150 years.

Ludmerer was born in Long Beach, Calif., and received a bachelor's degree in history and science in 1968 from Harvard University. He then went to Johns Hopkins, where he received a master's degree in the history of medicine in 1971 and a medical degree in 1973.

He joined Washington University in 1976 as instructor of medicine. He was named associate professor of medicine and associate professor of history in 1986, and he was promoted to professor of medicine and professor of history in 1992.

Among many honors, Ludmerer received the Nicholas E. Davies Memorial Award from the American College of Physicians in 1997, the Distinguished Alumnus Award of The John Hopkins University in 2000 and the Daniel Tosteson Award for Leadership and Medical Education from Harvard Medical School in 2001.

Ludmerer is president of the American Association for the History of Medicine and past president of the American Osler Society. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American College of Physicians. He has also been elected to the national honorary medical society Alpha Omega Alpha, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians and the American Clinical and Climatological Association.

And he has served on the editorial boards of nine professional journals and delivered named lectures at more than 150 educational institutions or professional societies.

For more information, or to contact Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, see their website at: medschool.wustl.edu