Mansour F. Armaly (February 25, 1927 – August 19, 2005) was a Palestinian physician who was globally recognized as a pioneering researcher in the modern medical treatment of glaucoma.
Armaly was born in Shefa Amr, Palestine, prior to the establishment of the state of Israel. He received his B.A. (1947) and M.D. (1951) from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. After completing his residency in Beirut at the American University Hospital, he left in 1955 to attend the University of Iowa, from which he received the M.Sc. in 1957. Armaly became an American citizen and joined the university's faculty, remaining for thirteen years.
Armaly's perception that glaucoma was in need of more extensive research led him to devote himself to its study, and under him the University of Iowa developed one of the premier programs in glaucoma research in the United States. One of his most important early studies proved that the incidence of glaucoma was increased fivefold in those with family histories of the disease, a pattern that facilitated subsequent clinical diagnosis of glaucoma, which can lead to blindness.
In 1970, he accepted a position as professor and chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology at the George Washington University Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., serving in that role for 27 years, until 1996. He published more than one hundred scientific articles, received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health, and was the recipient of numerous prestigious professional honors, including the Order of the Cedars for Scientific Achievements awarded by the Lebanese Government, the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology Award of Merit, an Achievement Award from the International Glaucoma Congress, and the Sir Stewart Duke Elder Gold Medal. From 1980 to 1987, Armaly served as President of the Pan-American Glaucoma Society. He died of cancer at the hospital where he had long worked at the age of 78.
He was survived by his wife of 55 years, Aida Armaly, and his two children, Fareed Armaly, an artist in Berlin, and Raya Armaly Harrison, an ophthalmologist in Columbia, Maryland.[1]
In 2004 the Mansour F. Armaly Lecture was established at the University Of Iowa, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, to honor an extraordinary clinician-scientist who devoted his career to the study and care of patients with ocular hypertension and glaucoma.
Armaly was instrumental in defining the natural history of glaucoma, in developing techniques of early detection and monitoring function loss in the eye, and in demonstrating the genetic character of glaucoma.
Armaly was recruited by Dr. Braley in 1958 from the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. As director of the glaucoma service he became internationally-known. Armaly was a distinguished member of the University of Iowa Department of Ophthalmology faculty from 1958–1970.
The Lecture Recipients have been nominated since 2004: 2004 Robert N. Weinreb, MD; 2005 David L. Epstein, MD; 2006 Richard L. Abbott, MD; 2007 M. Bruce Shields, MD; 2008 Michael A. Kass, MD [2]
further Obituaries: