ABOUT THE AUTHORHe was born in Brno Czechoslo-vakia on March 21, 1926. He receiv-ed his undergraduate training at theMasaryk University, with special in-terest in Anatomy, Anthropology andSpeleology. He received his M.D. de-gree at Yale medical School in 1952- winning the Mosby prize, the JamesHudson Brown Fellowship, and stu-died at the Woods Hole Marine La-boratory, Massachusetts. He obtain-ed his surgery training under OwenH. Wangensteen and C. Walton Lillehei at the University of Minnesota,sponsored by the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Associa-tion and the National Institutes of Health. He received a Ph.D. degree andalso an M.S. in physiology under Maurice B. Vissher in 1963. He was cer-tified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board ofThoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.Absolon was an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University ofMinnesota, Associate Professor of Surgery at Southwestem MedicalSchool, Dallas Texas and George Washington University, Washington.D.C. During his chairmanship at the Washington Hospital Center hefounded open-heart surgery at the facility, as well as the transplantationand shock-trauma programs. He has since been the Academic Chairmanof Surgery and Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana and sub-sequently held a special expert appointment on the clinical application ofheart assist devices at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Ma-ryland.Absolon has published over 150 studies in the area of clinical and aca-demic surgery and some 500 abstracts or reviews. The scientific highpoints of his professional career are the introduction of radioactive sub-strates in enzyme determinations (1952); pioneering studies on coronaryartery obstructive disease (by endarterectomy and internal mammary by-pass 1955); the heterotopic transplantation of the liver in children (1963);vascular chest bypass operations; esophageal replacement, for which hehas gathered international recognition.Absolon published or is coauthor of 12 books. He is the author of afour volume monograph, 'The Surgeon's Surgeon', on nineteenth-centurysurgery and the founder of modern gastrointestinal surgery Theodor Bill-roth. (Volumes I-III, Coronado Press, Lawrence, KS, 1979- 1987, VolumeIV by Kabel Publishers, Rockville, Md, 1988). The work was made intoa documentary motion picture in 1988 and translated into German (to bepublished in 1989).He has been a Visiting Professor and lecturer in the United States andabroad,including Yale, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, St. An-tonio, Buenos Aires, Greifswald, Berlin, London, Moscow, Paris, Prague,Bratislava, Brno, Vienna, Wiirzburg, Kiel, Riyadh and other universities,He has been the Harvey Lecturer at Yale, Fishbein Lecturer in Chicago,and was Vice President of the Academy of Arts and Sciences Inc., Presi-dent of the Washington Medical History Society, Vice President of theWashington Metropolitan Thoracic and Cardiovascular Society, etc. Heis a member of many professional societies here and abroad, and memberof various advisory and editorial boards. Absolon is listed in the WorldWho's Who in Science, Who's Who in America, Author's Who's Who,Encyclopedia Britannica, and the like.