Autobiographical Sketch

Michael Salcman

I was born in 1946 in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia and came to the United States in 1948; my parents were survivors of the Holocaust. I spent my youth in Brooklyn, New York and received my undergraduate and medical education in the combined Six Year Program in Liberal Arts and Medical Education at Boston University (1963-1969). Surgical internship at the University Hospital in Boston (1969-1970) was followed by research training as a Fellow in Neurophysiology in the Laboratory of Neural Control at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (1970-1972) and a residency in neurological surgery at the Neurological Institute of New York, Columbia University (1972-1976). From 1976 to 1991, I was on the faculty of the University of Maryland, where I eventually served as Professor and Head of the Division of Neurological Surgery (1983-1990). My early surgical career was the subject of a Pulitzer-prize winning article by Jon Franklin and a book by Franklin and Alan Doelp, "Not Quite A Miracle" (Doubleday, 1983).

I have authored more than 190 scientific papers as well as six textbooks: "Neurologic Emergencies" (2nd edition, Raven Press, 1990); "The Neurobiology of Brain Tumors" (Williams & Wilkins, 1991); "Current Techniques in Neurosurgery" (Current Medicine, 1993, Churchill Livingstone, 1996, Springer, 1998); and, most recently, the first revision in more than 30 years of Kempe’s classic two-volume "Operative Neurosurgery" (Springer, 2002). From 1990 to 1991, I served as President of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the largest professional association of neurosurgeons in the world. I was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the Neurological Institute of Columbia University in 1985 and received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from Boston University’s School of Medicine in 2001.

Outside of my "day job," I served as President of the Friends of Modern Art of the Baltimore Museum of Art. I am presently Vice-President of the Contemporary Museum of Art in Baltimore. In addition to my medical and scientific writings, I have published a number of articles on the fine arts, especially in regard to the relationship between the arts and sciences, and on the visual arts and the brain. "Re(Imag)ining the Brain" appeared in Creative Non-Fiction No.13 (1999) and my art reviews appear regularly on PEEKreview.net. Except for a ten year silent period (1977-1987), I have been writing poetry for almost 40 years. Since 1998, I have been working with Tom Lux at Sarah Lawrence College on the manuscript of my first book, Plow Into Winter, a finalist in the Washington Writers’ Book Publishing contest two years ago. Since then, another manuscript has been completed, Necessary Speech. During the past year my poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Raritan, The Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Smartish Pace, Poet Lore, Talking River Review and the Asheville Poetry Review.

My wife and I live in Baltimore with our cat; we are the proud parents of two children who are presently out of the home. My book manuscripts are in desperate search of a publisher.