Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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were being studied. He received further recognition in 1950 when named medical honor graduate of the year by his Alma Mater. In 1934 he married Margaret B. O'Tanyi of Philadelphia. This union was blessed by the arrival of a boy, Philip, in 1938 and a girl, Margaret, born in 1940. The Oppenheimers and their children currently reside in Norristown, Pa. Despite numerous research and faculty commitments Dr. Oppenheimer has maintained active membership in the following societies and professional organizations: The American Physiological Society; Fellowship in the American Assn, for Advancement of Science; Alpha Omega Alpha; Sigma Xi (President); The Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine; The Philadelphia Physiological Society (former President); and the Phi Chi Medical Fraternity. Posterity undoubtedly will respect even more than the above achievements his contributions to scientific literature wjiich already includes authorship or co-authorship of more than thirty-eight original articles which have appeared over the years in leading scientific and medical periodicals. Moreover, the development of the electrokymograph for the study of heart border motion and the use of the image amplifier with closed c. -ait telev s i projection were developed here at Temple during Dr. Oppenheimer's tenure. This, then, to date, is the measure of a truly fine productive Man of Science. We of the class of 1956 fondly dedicate our yearbook to Morton J. Oppenheimer, Professor and Head of the Department of Physiology. 27

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Dr. Oppenheimer was bom in Philadelphia and received his elementary training at the Edwin H. Fitler public school. Following secondary schooling at Germantown High, he matriculated at Ursinus College from which he graduated in 1927 with honors in chemistry. He then worked for a year as a control chemist with the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Company in Philadelphia and Elizabeth, New Jersey. In 1928 Dr. Oppenheimer entered medical school, winning the faculty prize as Temple's most outstanding senior in 1932. A year of internship at Reading Hospital followed, after which he returned to Temple, starting as an instructor in the department he currently heads. It was then that Dr. Oppenheimer's career in the fields of physiological and pharmacological education and research really got underway. Attendance at the Temple University Institute of Physiology, begun in 1933, was supplemented by summers at Harvard under the direction of Dr. Walter B. Cannon during which certain properties of smooth muscle and chemical mediators were investigated. In 1938 he received Masters in Education from Temple, accompanied by the Gold Medal for the finest thesis. The years passed and Dr. Oppenheimer advanced up the ladder of faculty responsibility. This progress culminated, in 1944, in a full professorship and appointment as Head of the Department of Physiology. The summers of these later years were spent at the Mayo Clinic's Institute of Experimental Medicine in association with Dr. Frank C. Mann, where new concepts of bowel motility and liver function

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professors emeritus Jesse O. Arnold, M.D., F.A.C.S. Emeritus Professor of Obstetrics G. Mason Astley, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Surgery W. Wayne Babcock, A.M., M.D., LL.D., F.A.C.S. Emeritus Professor of Surgery J. Garrett Hickey, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Physiology William C. Pritchard, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Anatomy William Egbert Robertson, M.D., F.A.C.P. Emeritus Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine and Clinical Medicine John B. Roxby, M.D. Emeritus Professor of Anatomy Melvin A. Saylor, B.S., M.D. Emeritus Professor of Physiological Chemistry William A. Steel, B.S., M.D., F.A.C.S. Emeritus Professor of Principles of Surgery W. Hersey Thomas, B.A., M.D., F.A.C.S. Emeritus Professor of Urology Matthew S. Ersner, M.D., F.A.C.S., F.I.C.S. Emeritus Professor of Oto-Rhinology 28