CBS alum and retired University professor looks back and gives back
Dr. Ray Anderson’s biography runs parallel to some of the most important medical and scientific developments of the last century. He spent his career at the first hospital devoted to caring for heart conditions and worked in a milieu that produced groundbreaking research that altered medicine forever. “Everything just happened to me,” says the Duluth native and son of Swedish immigrants.
As a freshman at Gustavus Adolphus College, Anderson got a job in the biology department paying 25 cents an hour. His undergraduate mentor and professor Dr. J. Alfred Elson helped him obtain a teaching assistant position at the University of Minnesota in the lab of Dr. C.P. Oliver, a leading geneticist. (Nobel Laureate Edward Lewis also studied with Oliver.) Anderson went on to complete his Ph.D. in Zoology (Genetics). Oliver encouraged him to apply to medical school to study the burgeoning field of medical genetics.
While still an undergraduate, Anderson spent the summer of 1942 working for the State Conservation Department. In his spare time, he collected fruit fly specimens, which he and fellow graduate student Melvin Green sent to Dr. J.T. Patterson at the University of Texas, an authority on fruit fly speciation. One of the specimens proved to be a new species. Patterson named it Drosophila lacicola and wrote two papers about it. Though he noted the contribution made by Anderson and Green, the students weren’t given credit as co-authors.
After graduating first in his class from the University of Minnesota Medical School, Anderson interned at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and completed his residency in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Hospital. Anderson also spent 1947-49 in Japan organizing the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission’s genetic research program. On returning to the states, he rejoined the pediatrics staff and embarked on a career punctuated by brushes with history: he was the first pediatric intern-resident at the first heart hospital and one of his patients was the first to undergo open-heart surgery using the cross-circulation technique.
Anderson spent three decades as a member of the pediatrics faculty and a practicing pediatric cardiologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School where he worked closely with open-heart surgery pioneers Drs. C. Walton Lillehei and Richard Varco. He retired as emeritus professor of pediatrics in 1980.
But for Anderson, who has given generously in support of pediatric cardiology research at the U, it was one his formative experiences as a biology grad student that inspired his latest gift: $250,000 to establish the Ray C. Anderson Fellowship in Zoology and Genetics. Anderson received the Alexander Anderson Fellowship in Zoology as a graduate student in 1941, which provided much needed support during that period. Says Anderson: “I always felt that I owed a little bit to the U for helping me.” —Stephanie Xenos
