Longtime University of Michigan pulmonologist Robert A. Green, M.D., died in Ann Arbor on April 13, 2015, at age 89.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Green's studies at Harvard University were interrupted by his military service during World War II. The U.S. Navy assigned him to the University of Illinois Medical School, from which he graduated as a civilian in 1948. After an internship at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and training in pathology and internal medicine at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, Green was called back into service during the Korean War. He then spent three years in the U.S. Public Health Service, where he led a tuberculosis sanatorium in Oklahoma.
In 1958, he became chief of the pulmonary disease section of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, with a faculty position in the U-M Medical School. He went on to become a full professor, coordinator of the Special Studies Program, assistant dean of the Medical School, associate dean for student affairs and chair of the faculty senate. He served as acting chief of the pulmonary and critical care section at the VA from 1984 to 1988.
Green won multiple awards for his teaching, and his warmth, humor and dedication to medicine touched everyone he met and worked with throughout his decades at Michigan.
"His love of medicine and medical education was evident in all of his interactions with physicians and students," says Hilary Haftel, M.D., a pediatric rheumatologist at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital — and Green's daughter-in-law. "He left an indelible mark on those he mentored."