Ideas and inspiration: a remembrance of Philip J Boyne, DMD, MS, DSc

One of the most important sources of ideas for development, investigation, and application of biomedical materials has always been the surgeon who has the ultimate responsibility for implementing the medical device in the treatment of his/her patients. But while all surgeons care about advancing the materials, methods, and instruments for treatment of their patients, it is only a very few who have the education/training, talent, and commitment to envisage the most promising innovations. Sadly, one such surgeon, Dr Philip Boyne, Emeritus Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in the School of Dentistry at Loma Linda University, died on 9 June 2008. Details of his life can be found elsewhere: (www.legacy.com/pe/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStoryPrint&PersonID=111344176). Dr Boyne was the compleat academic surgeon. Much of his 20-year career in the Navy, which ended in 1968, was spent at the Naval Research Institute at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, and all of his subsequent years were at universities: University of California at Los Angeles, University of Texas in San Antonio, and Loma Linda University. Throughout his professional life Dr Boyne dedicated himself to finding new solutions for oral and maxillofacial problems, and most of these solutions involved biomedical materials. He played substantial roles in the development of anorganic bone as a bone graft substitute material and a collagen membrane for guided tissue regeneration. To the end, he was actively participating in the development of biomedical materials for other oral and maxillofacial applications. Dr Boyne was one of the first surgeons to regularly attend biomaterials meetings and to publish in biomaterials journals. In these ways he shared his knowledge, experience, and ideas with the biomaterials community. He was generous in making his time available to young investigators, and unselfish in encouraging them to pursue their own ideas. It was his presentation at one of the early biomaterials meetings (Clemson University's Fourth Annual Symposium on Biomaterials, held in Clemson, South Carolina on 3–7 April 1972) that inspired me, at the time three months into my first faculty position at Clemson University. He reviewed his work treating patients with total mandibulectomies, a condition that I did not even know existed. As anybody would be, I was immediately struck by the horrific situation of losing one's entire mandible, and I could feel the hopelessness that the patients must have been experiencing. But Dr Boyne then proceeded to demonstrate how he reconstructed the mandibles using bone graft contained in a titanium meshwork molded to the shape of the lost bone. My horror was replaced by wonder at what could be achieved in regenerating tissue and relieving human suffering, and the central role that biomaterials played in the process. Ten years later, as I was researching various strategies in the development of bone graft substitute materials I again came in contact with Dr Boyne, having come across the many studies he had performed on bone graft materials while he was at the Naval Research Institute in the 1950s and 60s. He unselfishly shared his ideas and provided encouragement. One of Dr Boyne's most important traits as an investigator, and collaborator, was his honesty in reporting the negative as well as positive outcomes of the materials and procedures that he was studying. He was always thinking about what he was doing, and was indefatigable in seeking improvements in treatment options. Perhaps such determination is not difficult to understand in a person who would run marathons barefooted (nine of them at Boston). My remembrance of Dr Boyne is not unique. He served as a source of ideas and inspiration for decades of students, residents, and senior as well as junior investigators working on various aspects of biomedical materials. His passing makes us ever more appreciative of the importance of a team approach to multidisciplinary problems such as those encountered in the application of materials to the solution of medical problems. We can only hope that he and his like are adopted as role models by young surgeons.