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distinguished alumni by Patrick Kampert 2010 honorees share campus A Pair of Aces his many leadership roles, he is past president of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons and governor for Wisconsin of the American Col- lege of Surgeons. "I still have my surgical privileges," Wilson notes. "I'm winding down after 50 years, but it's been fun. I enjoy both the academic and clinical aspects. I enjoy working with medical students and residents and being able to take clinical problems from the bedside to the laboratory for investigation." Receiving the Alumni Award at David Sackett, MD '60, pioneered the patient-centered model of care combining epidemiology and statistics that became known as clinical epidemiology. TUART D. WIL- SON just had a chair in surgery endowed in his name at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. David Sackett is known for pioneering clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, and helping to discover the ben- efits that aspirin can have for the vascular system. As winners of the 2010 Distinguished Alumni Awards for the College of Medicine, they have much else in common: their MD class year ('60), outstanding achievements in lengthy medical and academic careers—and humility. "Our whole group was responsible for the work," Sackett says of his career's milestones, echoing Wilson's attitude. "Because I'm the oldest guy, I tend to get more credit than I deserve." Although both headed north after their studies at University of Illinois (Sackett to Ontario and Wilson to Wisconsin), both are Illinois natives. Sackett was raised in west suburban LaGrange, while Wilson grew up in the small farming community of Carrollton, halfway between Springfield and Alton. Wilson's father and brother also earned their medical degrees at the University of Illinois, and he says the school has meant much to his family. Two of his five sons are general surgeons. "Our dad was a country doc- tor," Wilson says. "It was a small community. He took care of ev- eryone and delivered thousands of babies. He was a very humble guy who got along with everybody." Wilson's own achievements as a surgeon prompted the Medi- cal College of Wisconsin to create the Stuart D. Wilson Chair in Surgical Oncology in October. That followed a conference and a Festschrift—the release of a collec- tion of essays honoring a scholar— recognizing Wilson last June. In endowing the chair, the college called Wilson "a gifted clinician, a dedicated researcher and teacher, and a wonderful human being." Although his talent in training surgeons is legendary in the Mid- west, Wilson's still-growing legacy goes beyond the classroom and op- erating room. He earned a Bronze Star with Combat V in the Vietnam War and has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. Among S 30 | WINT ER 2 011 the College of Medicine reunion in October was "humbling," he says. "It's particularly nice that the other person receiving the award was David Sack- ett. He was one of my heroes, even though he was one of my classmates." ACKETT SAYS he has warm memories of people from the College of Medicine, both "the faculty mentors who took me on, and my classmates, who were so interesting and diverse." Among his mentors was microbi- ology professor Robert Pumper, PhD, who invited Sackett to be a Summer Fellow in his laboratory, and gave Sackett a co-author credit in a paper he published in Nature in 1960. "He treated me as a young col- laborator, rather than a lab tech," Sackett says. Sackett is widely credited as the founder of clinical epidemiology, which combined epidemiology with statistics to create a patient-centered model of care. It is closely tied to his work in the field of evidence-based medicine, which British medical re- searchers have called one of the most PHOTO: DIANE SMUTNEY