OBITUARY The teacher’s teacher: a personal tribute to Alvan R

Alvan R Feinstein did not write extensively about the his-tory of medicine. But in the 20th century he himself wasa protagonist. He influenced the very meaning of clini-cal research. He eschewed the concept of the patient as merely the ultimate beneficiary of clinical research and closed the loop by demonstrating that the best clinical data were provided by the patient. Feinstein died on 25 October 2001 at the age of 75. He had been a physician for almost 50 years and a teacher of medical sciences for at least 45. He was a distinguished graduate of the University of Chicago in math-ematics (BSc 1947; MSc, 1948) and medicine (MD, 1952). He progressed to specialisation and related academic pursuits at Yale and Columbia universities as well as the Rockefeller Institute. He was Board Certified in Internal Medicine (1955). He published his first paper as a medical student in 1951 and his 410th this year. He wrote six major textbooks, finishing the last one, Principles of medical statistics, just before he died. At th