Eric Martin (Medicine, 1961)

Eric Martin DM (Oxon), FRCP, FRCR, FACC is Professor Emeritus of Radiology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He retired in the U.S. 3 years ago, where he still lives, and has been a regular donor and supporter of the college for the past 20 years.

I graduated MA BM BCh in 1967 and in 1974 moved to America, to Boston, to pursue Interventional Radiology, which was just starting as a specialty. The hard part was trying to learn the American language. Irony, cynicism and even satire were all regarded as sarcasm, and totally unacceptable. Trying to replace open surgery with catheter based techniques and no incision was rather easier by comparison, and it became my passion. Nearly 50 years later, satire is now acceptable, and the leading TV satirist, John Oliver, arrived recently from Birmingham (via the Footlights).

After Harvard Medical School, I went to New York and, three years later, joined the staff at Columbia- Presbyterian, the leading hospital in the city. Bill Casarella, who had recruited me, then told me that he was shortly to leave and I had been chosen to take over the Interventional Department. I knew I would be staying there for my whole career.

The major hospitals are usually affiliated with medical schools so one also has academic titles. This involved teaching registrars, training fellows who are sub-specialising, performing research and writing papers, as well as lecturing at meetings, in addition to a busy clinical load in a major hospital. The lecturing I finally came to like and ultimately travelled the world with meetings in, or at least relatively near, exotic places: Bagan, Borobudur and Angkor Wat all made my list. I rapidly met the leading Interventional Radiologists in the country, joined the Society of Interventional Radiology where I was befriended by probably the best known Interventional Radiologist at that time who, 10 or so years later, I followed as President of the Society.

In retrospect, an impressive sounding education (Oxford and Harvard) and an English accent, which I think in America is worth at least ten I.Q. points, had made the difference. That, and Robert Merton’s “Matthew effect” of cumulative advantage, which as far as I can tell, is a mixture of jobs for the boys and dumb luck.

I was 16 when my biology master suggested that I should consider going to Oxford or Cambridge. This was a totally alien thought to my parents, and certainly to me. By 18, Oxford and medicine were very real thoughts and I took the entrance exams naming Merton as my first choice. When they wouldn’t take me, my papers were passed around that group and I got a charming letter from the late Miles Vaughan Williams offering me a place at Hertford. One of my essays had been on Brideshead Revisited. After a couple of paragraphs I discovered I couldn’t remember Charles Ryder’s name, but it was too late to pick another topic so I soldiered on, hoping against hope that he would emerge from my sleep deprived fog. Perhaps I got points for ingenuity, but Miles opened his letter by saying “did I know that Evelyn Waugh was a Hertford man?”

When I came up I loved the College. I made some wonderful friends, several of whom are my best friends to this day. I was the only one reading medicine (actually animal physiology) and perhaps that was why I was offered a place. I used to trot up to South Parks Rd. and the laboratories most mornings. After that the day was spent less academically; lunches at the Turf, foreign movies, late night bridge games and sports. I even managed to captain the Oxford Rugby Fives team, a dubious distinction. I was reminded of it only the other day when contacted about a fundraising campaign.

Nearly twenty years ago, largely for my own amusement, I found myself totally draped in scarlet and kneeling on the floor of the Sheldonian in front of the Vice Chancellor who was rattling along incomprehensibly. (In my day, we needed a Latin O level to matriculate, but it served me ill.) Apparently, my job was to say do fidem at the appropriate time but he had summed me up correctly. He knew I couldn’t make it and the pause, if there was one, was miniscule. Fortunately it made no difference. Barely briefed for this performance, the do fidem bit never came up and I learned about it only recently. But the V.C. certainly knew.