Historical Committee Update

George H. Thompson, MD
SRS Historian

2015 ended with the wonderful celebration of the Scoliosis Research Society’s 50^th Annual Meeting & Course, September 30 – October 3 in Minneapolis, MN.  During the meeting, there were several major events organized by the Historical Committee.  Most notably, the 50^th Anniversary Museum and the Living Legends sessions. These were the culmination of several years of planning. We owe our Past-Historian, Behrooz A. Akbarnia, MD a special debt of gratitude for his vision, leadership and hard work in bringing this to fruition. The Historical Committee had its first conference call on Tuesday, January 26, 2016. The following issues were discussed:

1. The timeline used for the SRS Museum has been made digital in more ways than one! First, visitors to the SRS website can take a virtual tour of the actual museum, http://www.srs.org/virtual-museum/am15/index.php. Additionally, the timeline has been made into a living digital timeline, http://www.srs.org/historical-timeline/. Currently, only items from the museum are listed on this timeline. It will be the main task of the Historical Committee over the next few years to add to this timeline so that we have a complete history of spine deformity.

2. A major task of the Committee, and particularly myself, will be to bring our video archives up to date. At the Annual Meeting in Prague several interviews of past SRS presidents and European greats in spine deformity will be conducted. It has been mentioned that interviews are usually conducted five years after being Past-President or a Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Changing this is to one or two years may allow more interesting interviews as important issues that shaped the presidency or a Lifetime Award Winners life will be more current and pertinent to the viewer.

3. On a sad note, we lost another SRS founding member in January of this year. Dr. Anthony Bianco of Rochester, MN died on January 3, 2016. He was 89 years old. His full obituary is listed in this issue of the newsletter.

4. Finally, in early March, Ashtin Neuschaefer, Dr. Akbarnia and I will be meeting at the SRS office in Milwaukee to review many of the documents held there and determine what should be sent to the SRS Archives at Kansas University in Kansas City. Immediately following our visit to the SRS Office, we will be traveling to the SRS Archives to review what is currently being stored at that location.

Chair: George H. Thompson, MD Committee: Behrooz A. Akbarnia, MD; Jason E. Lowenstein, MD; Terry D. Amaral, MD; Alejo Vernengo-Lezica, MD; Patricia N. Kostial, BSN, RN; Jay Shapiro, MD; Hani Mhaidli, MD, PhD