At that point, says Dr. Gall, laughing as he recalls the incident, Dr. Schumacher turned to him and said, “So, that’s not interesting? And, by the way, you don’t know how to spell Schumacher!”
Career Timeline
1959–Earns his MD from the University of Pennsylvania
1960–Completes an internship at Denver General Hospital
1962–Completes a residency at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles
1963–Completes rheumatology fellowship at Wadsworth VA Hospital and University of California Los Angeles Medical Center
1965–Completes military service at Travis Air Force Base in California
1967–Completes rheumatology fellowship Robert B. Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston
1967–Becomes associate in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
1967–Becomes chief of the arthritis section of the VA Medical Center in Philadelphia
1969–Becomes assistant professor of medicine at Penn Becomes director of the VA-Penn rheumatology traineeship
1972–Becomes associate professor of medicine at Penn
1975–Becomes associate professor of comparative medicine at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine
1979–Becomes professor of medicine at Penn
1985–Becomes adjunct professor of medicine at Drexel University School of Medicine, Philadelphia
1991–Becomes acting chief of rheumatology at Penn
2002–Becomes professor of orthopedic surgery at Penn
Dedicated Mentor
Naomi Schlesinger, MD, chief of rheumatology in the department of medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, N.J., says that whenever she thinks of Dr. Schumacher, she pictures him where he could often be found—in his large office, in front of his electron microscope, surrounded by hundreds of manuscripts in brown boxes lined up against the wall. His office door was always open.
During Dr. Lally’s time at Penn, he recalls how encouraging Dr. Schumacher was: “He taught me a lot of organizational skills—things I try to pass on to our fellows [here at Brown University]. The approach to the patient, the exam, and the intellectual and scientific honesty that he passed along to us, I think, were really important. He was probably my biggest influence in rheumatology.”
Dr. Schumacher’s long-time associate, Bonnie Brice Dorwart, MD, notes that, “as well known as Dr. Schumacher is—and he is known the world over—he is totally dedicated to having his fellows do their best.” Dr. Dorwart is former chair of the rheumatology division at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood, Pa., and the first female rheumatology fellow at Penn. When she embarked on a study to compare joint fluid and blood samples from patients with a variety of rheumatic conditions, Dr. Schumacher placed signs in the clinics asking fellows to call her about their patients’ joint and blood samples. “Once we had a project,” she recalls, “Ralph was just single minded. He convinced even his private patients—if that person was a candidate for this study—to return to the clinic the next day to collect fluid. Every study we did, he was on point.”
