2001 Distinguished Medical Alumnus
Marshall A. Lichtman was born in 1934 and grew up in the Bronx, NY, his father’s home, and after World War II moved to Buffalo, NY, his mother’s home. He attended Lafayette High School, Cornell University and the University of Buffalo School of Medicine from 1956-1960, at that time a private institution. He moved to Rochester, New York in 1960 for his medical residency at the University of Rochester Medical Center-Strong Memorial Hospital. After three years of residency, he spent two years in the Public Health Service at the School of Public Health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to meet the, then, two years of government service required of medical graduates. He returned to Rochester in 1965 as Chief Resident in Medicine. He would stay at the University of Rochester for the rest of his career.
The Leukemia Society of America awarded him a Scholar Grant in 1969. With a subsequent research grant from the National Cancer Institute, they provided him with the resources to launch his research activities. He devoted himself to the care of patients with blood cell diseases, especially leukemia and lymphoma, conducted research on blood cell diseases, taught medical students and residents in the department of medicine and guided the training of clinical and research fellows in hematology. His research interests have included red cell and leukocyte physiology and biochemistry, hematopoiesis and marrow structure and function, hemoglobin function, the human myelogenous leukemias and related disorders, and other clinical disorders of blood cells. The National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia Society of America, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Biomedical Research Program, and several foundations sponsored his research.
In addition to providing leadership as chief of the hematology division at the University of Rochester, he served as Dean of Academic Affairs and Research for ten years (1979-89) and, subsequently, as Dean of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry for six years (January 1990 through December 1995).
He has served on the National Institutes of Health Hematology Study Section, as chair of the peer review group of the Division of Biological and Medical Research of the U.S. Navy and chair of the Scientific Council of the American Red Cross, Holland Research Laboratories. He has been President of the American Society of Hematology (1989), Executive Vice-President of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (1996-2007), a member of the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross (1990-96). Governor Mario Cuomo appointed him to the Council for Graduate Medical Education of the State of New York (1991-94). Governor David Patterson appointed him to the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York in 2010. Governor Andrew Cuomo reappointed him, serving until 2018, when he, regrettably, had to resign because of his retirement to California. On the Board of Trustees, he served for a time as chair of the Research and Economic Development Committee, the Academic Medical Centers and Hospitals Committees and as a member of the Academic Affairs and Finance Committees.
Dr. Lichtman has served on the editorial board of nine scientific publications and as the editor-in-chief of Blood Cells, Molecules, and Diseases (2000-13). He has been the editor of three monographs and five textbooks of hematology, including the 3rd through the 10th edition of a leading textbook, Williams Hematology. He has conducted research and authored hundreds of scientific articles, reviews, editorials, letters and book chapters on the physiology, biochemistry, and clinical disorders of blood cells from 1965 to 2023. In 2017, he received the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hematology from the American Society of Hematology.
In 2018, to be closer to their three daughters and their families as they aged into the mid-80s, Dr. Lichtman and his wife of 66 years (married in 1957), Alice Jo, a retired computer systems developer, moved to Playa Vista, Los Angeles County, CA. After 58 years in Rochester, the community and the medical center remain, close to his heart and he continues his many friendships and connections their as Professor Emeritus of Medicine and of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Dean Emeritus of the School of Medicine and Dentistry. Since moving to California, Dr. Lichtman served as an author of eleven chapters and one of the editors of the tenth edition of the leading textbook Williams Hematology, which was published in February 2021. He coedited a text Williams Hematology: The Red Cell and Its Diseases, published in 2022 and was a coeditor of the 10th edition of Williams Manual of Hematology, published in 2022. In addition, he has published several medical papers and several essays on the history of medicine.