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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2009;138:1051-1052
© 2009 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Thomas B. Ferguson, MD

Recipient, 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo

^_* Address for reprints: James L. Cox, MD, 13523 Rosewood Lane, Naples, FL34119. (Email: jamescoxmd@aol.com).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

On May 11, 2009, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Thomas B. Ferguson, MD. Few surgeons of any generation have been so universally revered by their contemporaries as Tom Ferguson, the only living surgeon to have served as President of both the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (1976–1977) and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (1981–1982).

Tom was born in Oklahoma, where his grandfather Ferguson was the first Territorial Governor of Oklahoma, his father was a successful newspaper publisher, and his mother, Lucia Loomis Ferguson, was quite famous as a nationally syndicated columnist fervently devoted to women's rights. Tom attributes his early interest in medicine to his grandfather Loomis, who upon graduating from the Cincinnati Medical School in the 1880s spent his life as a frontier doctor among the Choctaw Indians of the Oklahoma territory. After attending public schools in Oklahoma, Tom graduated from Duke University and then from its medical school and thereafter trained in surgery at both Duke and Barnes Hospital/Washington University in St Louis with a year out to complete a Public Health Service fellowship in physiology at Harvard. With the exception of 4 years in private practice in Florida in the early 1960s, Tom's entire professional career has been spent in St Louis.

A simple litany of the awards that Tom Ferguson has received and the important positions that he has held during his career would exceed my allotted word count for this article. Tom has been honored with awards and appointments repeatedly by his friends and surgical colleagues in St Louis, by his alma mater, by his national and international surgical colleagues, and by virtually every organized body in his . . . [Full Text of this Article]