The American Academy of Ophthalmology honors Dr. Victor T Curtin for his contributions to ophthalmology as a clinician, ardent teacher, and administrator of many years in the Department of Ophthalmology of the University of Miami School of Medicine.

Dr. Curtin was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard College, he received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1953. He interned at the San Francisco County Hospital and completed his residency in Ophthalmology at New York Hospital/Cornell University Medical School, where he met Dr. Edward Norton. He finished his training with a fellowship in Ocular Pathology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in preparation to join Dr. Norton in 1959 and to help establish a full-time Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Within three years, the first building was completed and the department was named the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. During this period, Dr. Curtin was responsible for developing the residency training program, teaching medical students, setting up an ocular pathology laboratory, and establishing the Florida Lions Eye Bank as well as an active clinical practice with an emphasis on retinal diseases and surgery.

As a clinician of 37 years, Dr. Curtin has trained numerous residents and fellows in medical retinal diseases and techniques in retinal detachment surgery. When medical students took an elective course at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Dr. Curtin made sure that each one had the opportunity to view the fundus via indirect ophthalmoscopy. Over the course of his long tenure, approximately 800 residents and fellows have trained at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and gone on to positions throughout the United States and many other countries. Twenty-five are or have been chairs of the ophthalmology department at their institutions.

Dr. Curtin’s ocular pathology service and the Florida Lions Eye Bank have grown hand in hand and are preeminent in their field. In the early 1960s he began to study and follow his patients with intraocular malignant melanomas for a 15-year period. He felt that a more conservative approach than immediate enucleation of the eye in small and medium-sized melanomas would not harm the patient. This concept was not well received initially, but in time there was a change in attitude and in the treatment of this disease in the ophthalmological community.

Dr. Curtin has received many awards; among them, the University of Miami awarded him the title of Distinguished Professor in 1992 and the Distinguished Service Award in 1996 and appointed him Grand Marshall at its commencement in 1998. In 1991 he was honored with an endowed Victor T Curtin Professorship in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. The Executive Board of the Florida Lions Eye Bank endowed the Department of Ophthalmology to provide annually in his honor a series of lectures by a visiting professor to enhance resident education.

Dr. Curtin became emeritus professor in 1998 but continues to work voluntarily at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and faithfully attends weekly Grand Rounds. His great pleasure is to watch the amazing maturation of the residents and fellows during their period at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, the friendships they acquire, and their appreciation of the hospitality of his wife, Mary Louise, during their training.

The Academy expresses its admiration and gratitude for Dr. Curtin’s years of dedication and leadership in the field of Ophthalmology. It is with great pride that the Academy welcomes him as a Guest of Honor in 2007.