Dr. Llloyd Hollingsworth Smith Jr., a Harvard University alumnus and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, visited Film Annex’s studio for an interview with executive director of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dr. Ushma Neill. The visit was part of the video series, Conversations with Giants in Medicine, which interviews Nobel Prize winners and renowned scientists and is produced in collaboration with JCI and hosted on its Web TV.
In the video, Smith discusses being chairman of the University of California’s medical school since the early 1960s. The university has the highest standards in patient care, teaching and research. Smith recalls medical school in Boston when he was 19 years old, as well as his experiences with the Navy as a young man.
“The remarkable thing was that the Pearl Harbor happened while I was a freshman [at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.], and this remarkably altered the career and aspirations of all of us at that age,” Smith said. “I was 17 at the time and we were, quickly, later that year taken into uniform and told if we could be admitted into medical school, the Army—or Navy, in my case—would send you to whichever institution you were admitted to.”
He also spoke about getting the first artificial kidney to work in military medicine during the Korean War.
View the full interview below.