Maurice Victor, 1920 - 2001
Maurice Victor was born in 1920 in Canora, Saskatchewan to immigrant parents from Belarus and Lithuania. He was raised in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1938 and received his medical degree from there in 1943.
After earning his degree he immediately enlisted in the Canadian Army where he rose to the rank of a decorated Captain in the medical corps. After the war he immigrated to the United States to study hematology and neurology, which he specialized in. In 1951, Victor joined the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital and began to teach in the neurology department at Harvard Medical School. In 1962, he became a professor at Case Western University and the director of the Neurology department at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. In 1977, McGraw Hill published "Principles of Neurology" written by Victor and Dr. Raymond D. Adams, a textbook on diseases of the nervous system.. It was a widely acclaimed success, spawning seven editions and translated into German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Victor retired in 1986 but remained active, spending the next six years helping out at the V. A. Hospital in White River Junction, Vermont. He also volunteered as a mentor to medical students and young doctors at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Besides the neurology textbook, Victor wrote a few other books and over 200 articles, most on the affect of alcoholism on the nervous system.
Maurice Victor died on June 21, 2001 in New Hampshire at the age 81 from the effects of prostate cancer.