Lauren Ackerman
Lauren Vedder Ackerman (March 12, 1905 – July 27, 1993) was an American doctor and pathologist who helped establish surgical pathology as a key medical field in the mid-20th century.
He was born in Auburn, New York, to educated parents. He started college studying engineering at St. Lawrence University, then finished his bachelor’s degree at Hamilton College in 1927. After a year working as an engineer, he decided to become a doctor. He earned his medical degree from the University of Rochester in 1932. Ackerman did his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He had a year-long sabbatical because of tuberculosis, and as a patient in a sanitarium he helped with autopsies.
Ackerman then trained in pathology, returning to Rochester for a year under George Whipple, and later worked in Boston at Pondville State Cancer Hospital. He married Elizabeth Fitts in 1938. Unable to find a pathology job right away, he returned to UCSF in 1939 as an assistant professor of medicine, performing autopsies on patients with lung diseases. In 1940 he moved to Ellis Fischel Cancer Hospital in Columbia, Missouri, where he also did electrocardiography and radiotherapy.
With Juan Del Regato, he wrote Cancer: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prognosis. He formed strong ties with surgeons at Barnes Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, which helped his career in surgical pathology. In 1948 he became chief surgical pathologist and associate professor of surgery at Barnes Hospital.
In 1953 he published Surgical Pathology, a groundbreaking textbook focused on diagnosing diseases from tissue and their clinical importance. The book drew widespread attention and many pathologists learned from it. Ackerman trained many surgical pathology fellows who became leaders in the field. He retired from Washington University in 1973 and returned to New York, taking an adjunct position at Stony Brook University. He remained active in teaching and editing, with Juan Rosai later continuing the Rosai & Ackerman’s Surgical Pathology edition.
Ackerman received several awards, including the Janeway Medal, the Fred W. Stewart Award, the Gold-Headed Cane Award, the Distinguished Service Award from Washington University, the Prix de Paris, and the City of Paris Award. He enjoyed pool, fishing, golf, art, literature, classical music, and fine food and wine. He had four children and 13 grandchildren. His first wife Elizabeth died in 1981; he later married Carol Blum. In 1993 he developed abdominal problems and died July 27, 1993, from peritoneal carcinomatosis due to colon cancer.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:36 (CET).