The Institute of Medical Science (IMS) is mourning the loss of Dr. Bernard Langer who passed away on February 23, 2022 at 89 years of age. Bernie, as he was affectionately known by those close to him, was an important and valued member of the IMS community.
The IMS established the "Bernard Langer Annual Lecture in Health Sciences" Scientific Day Keynote Lecture to honour his achievements in establishing the Surgeon-Scientist training program at the University of Toronto during his tenure as Chair of the Department of Surgery from 1982 -1992. Among Dr. Langer's many accomplishments include receiving the Order of Canada in 2002 and being inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2015.
You can read more about Dr. Langer's remarkable life in his Globe & Mail obituary. He will be fondly remembered and missed by all those from the IMS who knew him.
In 2018, as part of the IMS 50th Anniversary celebrations, Dr. Langer wrote the below "IMS50 Story", highlighting the important contributions he made to the IMS and the wider medical science community:
Before the IMS was started in 1968 research training in the Department of Surgery was haphazard with few trainees working in quality laboratories and many others, myself included, wasting their time in unsatisfactory research environments.
In 1983 as a new chair of the Department of Surgery, I identified a separate stream in our residency programme to train clinician-scientists. I asked Drs. Steven Strasberg, Charles Tator and Bryce Taylor to outline a program that could integrate at least 2 years of quality research training within our clinical surgical programs. The IMS was exactly what we needed to provide the infrastructure and standards that we were looking for. A bonus was the requirement that supervisors be members of the SGS, which became an incentive for our surgical faculty as well. Funding of trainees was guaranteed by the department and no funding was made available to research trainees outside that program. Dr. Aubie Angel helped in establishing our new Surgeon Scientist Program (SSP) and Dr. Mel Silverman provided outstanding support during our first decade of growth.
Our intention was to select the most promising students and provide them with security of funding for the duration of their training. The expectation was that these trainees would become our “farm system” for future faculty recruits. In addition, our hope was that this program would attract surgical trainees from other medical schools to come for combined surgical and research training. This program has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. We took our first three trainees in 1984 and by 1996 had over 40 enrolled in the SSP. To our surprise, 80% of our trainees obtained their degrees, one third of them being PhDs. Our faculty recruits from this program have become the core leadership of our department and most of our best clinician investigators.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, after extensive debate and lobbying from the medical scientific community established the Clinician-Investigator Program in 1995. This program, based on the SSP model, provided a national standard for research training for physicians. It is hard for me to imagine how any of this could have happened without the IMS having been in place. The IMS at the University of Toronto has played an essential role in elevating and maintaining the quality of clinician investigator training in Canada and beyond.
