| Juan Rosai, M.D. | |
|---|---|
| Born | 20th August 1940 Poppi, Italy |
| Residence | Milan, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian, American |
| Fields | Medicine & Pathology |
| Alma mater | University of Buenos Aires, Argentina & Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri |
| Known for | Research in Surgical pathology |
| Influences | Eduardo Lascano and Lauren Ackerman |
Juan Rosai, M.D. (20th August 1940) is an Italian-born American physician who has contributed to clinical research in the subspecialty of surgical pathology. He is the principal author and editor of a major textbook in that field, and he has characterized novel medical conditions such as Rosai-Dorfman disease and the desmoplastic small round cell tumor. Rosai is also well-known because of his role as mentor and teacher to many American and international surgical pathologists.
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Juan Rosai was born in Poppi, a little town near Florence, province of Arezzo, in the region of Tuscany, Italy.[1] When he was eight years old, his parents emigrated to Buenos Aires, Argentina because of the economic problems in Italy after World War II.[2] At the age of 15 Rosai enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires.[2] During his third year of medical school, he met Professor Eduardo Lascano, a pathologist who influenced young Rosai's interest in that discipline. Dr. Rosai earned the M.D. degree at the age of 21, and then he did the residency training in Anatomic Pathology at the same university, under the direction of Dr. Lascano. While serving subsequently as a house officer in pathology at the Regional Hospital of Mar del Plata, Rosai was introduced to Dr. Lauren Ackerman at a medical conference in Argentina.[2] Ackerman invited Rosai to train with him in St. Louis, Missouri in the United States.
After accepting the offer to pursue additional studies in the U.S., Dr. Rosai completed his residency and fellowship in anatomic pathology at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes Hospital under Ackerman's tutelage.[2][3] Subsequently, Rosai remained on the faculty of Washington University until 1974, when he was appointed Professor & Director of Anatomic Pathology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He left there in 1985 for an identical position at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, where he stayed until 1991.[3] From 1991 to 1999, Rosai was the James Ewing Alumni Professor and Chairman of Pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.[3]
Dr. Rosai has maintained ties to Italy, his home country, throughout his life. In 1982–1983 he spent a sabbatical year at the University of Florence and the University of Bologna. He chose to move permanently back to Italy in 2000, as Chairman of the Department of Anatomic Pathology at the Istituto Nazionale Tumori in Milan, Italy. In 2005, he became the Director of the Center for Oncologic Pathology Consultations at the Centro Diagnostico Italiano in Milan, Italy, where he continues his work teaching surgical pathology to Italian, American and international young pathologists and also with his pathology consultation service. Rosai still has academic connections to the United States, as Adjunct Professor of Pathology at the Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University; Visiting Professor of Pathology at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital; and Senior Pathologist at Genzyme Genetics Corporation, New York.
Rosai is an author of more than 400 scientific peer-reviewed papers on topics in pathology,[4] including the seminal descriptions of such entities as sinus histiocytosis with massive lymphadenopathy (Rosai-Dorfman disease), desmoplastic small round cell tumor, spindle-cell epithelial tumor with thymus-like differentiation of the thyroid, and sclerosing angiomatoid nodular transformation of the spleen.[5][6][7][8] He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal Of Surgical Pathology (ISSN 1066-8969) as well as a member of the editorial boards of several other pathology journals. Rosai was also Editor-in-Chief of the 3rd Series of the Atlas of Tumor Pathology of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), and author of AFIP fascicles on Tumors of the Thymus[9] and Tumors of the Thyroid Gland.[10] Rosai has edited a book on the history of American surgical pathology, called Guiding the Surgeon's Hand,[11] and has been the principal author and editor of a pathology textbook called Rosai and Ackerman's Surgical Pathology, now in its tenth edition (ISBN 9780323069694). He has also edited or co-edited 13 other books.[4] Because of his professional accomplishments and his mentorship of many American and international professional trainees, Rosai has been called "the pathologist of pathologists".[2]
During his career, Dr Rosai has accumulated a comprehensive collection of slide seminars including histopathology slides of interesting and educational pathological cases with the comments by connoted pathologists. During the 2010 annual meeting of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology (USCAP), Dr. Rosai announced the donation of his entire slide seminars collection which will be available as digital pathology files through the USCAP website as an open and free educational and historical resource.[12] The transformation of this precious collection into digital, 24/7, anytime-anywhere accessible format is under way through a collaboration between Juan Rosai, USCAP, and Aperio Technologies, Inc., (Aperio); the digital collection is anticipated to become available on www.uscap.org in early 2011. The collection consists of almost 20,000 cases originally presented at more than 1,400 pathology seminars, and comprises digital images of the original histopathological slides, clinical history, and diagnostic summaries, along with present day commentary by Rosai and other experts.
In appreciation for his contributions to pathology, Rosai has received formal recognition from academic institutions around the world, as follows: