Jeremiah Abraham Barondess

Jeremiah Abraham Barondess (June 6, 1924- ) is an American internist who, for most of his career, was on the faculty of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City, and later for 16 years as President of the New York Academy of Medicine. After retirement at the Academy he was appointed professor of cinical epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
==Early years==
Jeremiah Barondess was born in New York City on June 6, 1924, the son of Benjamin Barondess, (1891-1960), a Manhattan attorney and Lincoln/Civil War scholar, and Dora (Greenberg) Barondess, matriarch of a warm extended family. He has lived in New York City all of his life, except for the years he spent in undergraduate and graduate education. A premedical student before his Army induction during World War II, he was assigned by the Army to medical school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. 
==Education==
He attended four institions after high school (Hofstra College, Pennsylvania State university, Wayne State University, and the University of Michigan), the latter two while in the Army during WWII, and was then assigned to Johns Hopkins, graduating in 1949. 
After two years as a house officer on the Osler Medical Service of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he was recalled to military service when the Korean War broke out. Many who were similarly recalled entered NIH institutes and got involved in clinical research. Barondess went into the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a branch of the U.S. Public Health Service, which was being organized as a biological warfare defense unit for the continental United States. He, along with 25 or so other recently-graduated physicians, most of whom were recruited from medical residency programs, received a few months of intensive training in epidemiology and then were stationed at various locations throughout the continental United States, mostly in state health departments. 
Barondess was based at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as part of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania where he was to be responsive to disease outbreaks in the Northeastern states. He was part of investigations of viral hepatitis and the efficacy of gamma globulin in poliomyelitis prophylaxis, and during this time was invited to attend meetings of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, an experience he valued for its exposure to population-level planning. 
At the end of his Public Health Service assignment, he was invited back to Johns Hopkins to complete his residency training, but decided that he would likely eventually practice in New York, so he chose to complete his residency training in internal medicine at the New York Hospital/Cornell, serving as Chief Resident in Medicine from 1954-55. 
Barondess married Sue Kaufman on November 22, 1953 (deceased 1977). She was a widely published novelist and shortv story writer. They had one child, James Joseph Barondess (b. 1957). 
He married Linda (Hiddemen) Barondess (b. 1945- ), on December 10, 1982. She was Director of Medical Education at the American College of Physicians from 1978-1983, and later became Executive Vice President of the American Geriatrics Society (1982-2010). 
==Career==
After completion of his residency training Barondess was offered a faculty position at Cornell. He was not attracted to a career in clinical research, but preferred a career as an academic generalist clinician. He was told then that Cornell was recruiting new physician faculty primarily in the subspecialties of internal medicine, so he accordingly went into practice as a general internist and accepted an appointment to the voluntary faculty at Cornell. As things turned out, this decision made it possible for him to practice, in his words, as an “academic generalist more or less on my own terms.” Over the years since 1955, as part of the medical staff at New York Hospital and Cornell University Medical College, he rose through the Hospital and University ranks to be appointed as the William T. Foley Distinguished Professor in Clinical Medicine and Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine, posts he held until his retirement in 1990, including 9 years as Chief of the Private Medical Service of The New York Hospital.
In 1990, at age 66, after his retirement from Cornell and the New York Hospital, he was appointed President of the New York Academy of Medicine, a position he held until 2006 (at 82 years of age). After the Academy years he accepted an appointment as Professor of Clinical Epidemiology in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. In 2023, at age 99, he retired from Columbia University. 
At the New York Academy of Medicine Dr. Barondess set out an ambitious agenda and led this 143-year old institution far beyond its traditional role as a staid and formal organization offering educational and advisory resources to the practicing health professions, but passive in its advocacy for highly salient health issues of the day. Under Barondess, the Academy became the focal point of multiple working groups and initiatives addressing the most important and pressing issues related to health of the greater New York region, but also the nation and issues of significance to global health. He was instrumental along with the Academy’s Board of Trustees in deciding to make the primary focus of the Academy’s larger agenda the broad field of urban health, which it defined as an area of specific public health concern. The name of the Academy’s long-standing regular publication, The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, was changed to The Journal of Urban Health, which has become the world’s most important journal on this topic, attracting authors of important studies addressing issues related to the health of urban populations throughout the globe. Barondess himself has become a major figure in worldwide considerations of the health issues of salience to cities. With the help of several private philanthropies he was able to recruit to the Academy an impressive professional staff from major academic centers representing multiple relevant disciplines. 
Dr. Barondess has for many years focused much of his attention on the role of physicians and the medical profession in the general society, and the moral and ethical issues confronting the profession in various eras and socio-political situations. His interest in these topics led to his interest in the role of the German medical profession and biomedical research in the Third Reich, about which he has published several papers in recent years. His paper entitled “Medicine Against Society: Lessons from the Third Reich” was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996. 
==Awards and honors==
1949 Phi Beta Kappa, The Johns Hopkins University
1949 Alpha Omega Alpha, Johns Hopkins University
1956 Diplomate, American Board of Internal Medicine
1971 Elected Member, Institute of Medicine, National Academies 
 (National Academy of Medicine)
1978-79 President, American College of Physicians
1977-97 Trustee the Johns Hopkins University
1979 Master, American College of Physicians
1982 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
1983 President, American Osler Society
1986 Fellow, Royal College of Physicians of London
1987	 President, Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society
1990-06 President, New York Academy of Medicine
1994 President, American Clinical and Climatological Association
1994 Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2023 New York Academy of Medicine launch of the Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship in the
 Clinical Transaction (two-year awards for young clinical faculty)
Four Honorary Degrees:
1978 D.Sc. Albany Medical College, Union University
1992 D.Humane Letters, New York Institute of Technology
1993 D. Med. Sci. Medical College of Pennsylvania
1998 D.Sc. New York Medical College
==Retirement==											
Dr. Barondess has “retired” at least three times from positions at Cornell University and the New York Hospital, from the New York Academy of Medicine, and from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Throughout his long career, he has published on a range of clinical and educational topics and edited multiple books on clinical diagnosis and on topics in the history of medicine. Over the years since the last of these “retirements” he has continued to write occasional papers on various topics, particularly the role of medicine in the larger society. 
==Works==										
Over 150 peer-reviewed publications in professional journals in the fields of medicine and public health.
Edited books with colleagues:
Barondess, J.A. (Ed.). Diagnostic Approaches to Presenting Syndromes. Williams & Wilkins Co., Baltimore, 1971.
Harvey, A.M., Bordley, J., Barondess, J.A.: Differential Diagnosis. Interpretation of Clinical Evidence, 3rd Edition. Philadelphia, W.B. Saunders Co., 1979. 
Samiy, A.H., Douglas, R.G., Jr., Barondess, J.A. (Eds.) Textbook of Diagnostic Medicine, Philadelphia, Lea and Febiger, 1987.
Barondess, J.A., Carpenter, C.C.J., Harvey, A.M. (Eds.): Differential Diagnosis, Philadelphia, Lea & Febriger, 1994. 
Walton, J., Barondess, J.A., Lock, S. (Eds.): The Oxford Companion to Medicine, 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Category:Cornell University alumni
Category:American internists
ategory:1924 births
Category:American people