That was the quality that Lan Chen, MD, PhD, a rheumatologist at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia, was most impressed by when she became a fellow in 2000. “Knowing that he is such a well-known researcher, I was amazed at how involved he is, research-wise,” she says. “He would never say no to even small projects. He really has that zest in doing research!”
He was also nurturing of his fellows. Dr. Schumacher and his wife, Liz, made Dr. Lally and his wife, newcomers to Philadelphia in 1980, feel very welcome, recalls Dr. Lally. “My wife still has fond memories of our time in Philadelphia,” he says. Dr. Schlesinger, too, warmly recalls cookouts held in the Schumacher’s award-winning terraced garden. (Dr. Schumacher and his wife transformed an eroded hillside into what Dr. Schumacher now calls “a fairyland” with garden sculptures from their travels, a fountain, fish pond, and exotic and native plants with all-season interest.)
A Zest for Life, Research, and Collaboration
Former fellows have often remained collaborators with Dr. Schumacher. When he left Penn for the University of Arizona in 1973, Dr. Gall continued to collaborate with Dr. Schumacher. They shared an interest in medical photography and later coauthored an atlas on rheumatoid arthritis, among other projects.
Dr. Schumacher managed to fit in multiple collaborations around his teaching and travel schedule—which was extensive, because he is an honorary member of countless international rheumatism societies.
Dr. Schumacher played basketball and tennis in college and continued for most of his life, participating in an over-30 basketball league and playing with the Penn house staff into his 60s. One picture on his Web site (www.med.upenn.edu/synovium) shows him shooting hoops with his Taiwanese colleagues during his 1979 sabbatical, during which he set up the first rheumatology division in Taiwan. Since 2005, he has spearheaded OMERACT’s Special Interest Groups and their resulting Workshop on Outcome Measures for Acute and Chronic Gout.8
Dr. Schumacher reflects that what initially drew him to research in rheumatology—his initial quest to explore the synovium and find the causes for rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases—remains as an evolving puzzle. A surprise discovery was that even normal joints often have DNA and RNA from Chlamydia (as well as various other infectious agents) lodged in the joint, without causing disease.9 “We’re all exposed to various external insults that can apparently bombard our joints, and I’ve been trying to stimulate people to consider that ‘disease’ probably results from a complicated interaction between the host’s genetically determined variety of responses to various environmental insults, rather than a specific insult itself.”10