Susan O. Montgomery Lecture: The Many Faces of Benjamin Rush

Beginning at 6:00 p.m. EST on Thursday, December 6, live stream the event. 

The Susan (Susie) O. Montgomery Lecture Series honors a remarkable Friend of the American Philosophical Society and a great champion of Benjamin Franklin’s founding mission of “promoting useful knowledge.”

Former APS President Clyde Barker will deliver the 2018 Susan O. Montgomery Lecture on early APS Member Benjamin Rush. Rush was an important patriot and social reformer. In addition he was the most influential and controversial physician of his time.

Clyde Barker was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1997 and served as the Society's President from 2011 to 2017. Barker is a native of Salt Lake City and a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Cornell University, and Cornell University Medical College. His internship and residency in surgery were at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has served his entire academic and professional career. Following residency training he was a fellow in vascular surgery and then a postdoctoral fellow in medical genetics under Rupert Billingham, studying transplantation biology. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1966 and became Professor of Surgery in 1973. From 1966 to 2001 he was Chief of Transplantation Surgery and, from 1982 to 2001, Chief of the Division of Vascular Surgery. From 1983 to 2001 he was the John Rhea Barton Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery, and Director of the Harrison Department of Surgical Research. He is now Donald Guthrie Professor of Surgery. The Clyde F. Barker Transplant House at University of Pennsylvania Hospital is named in his honor.