Harold Schuknecht and Temporal Bone Otopathology in the United States

Harold Schuknecht was born in 1917 in South Dakota (Figure 1). An otologic surgeon, otopathologist, and research director, his extensive otologic research career spanned from the 1940s until the 1990s. He finished his undergraduate studies at the University of South Dakota, medical school at Rush Medical College in Chicago, an internship in Des Moines, Iowa, and finished his otolaryngology residency at the University of Chicago in 1949. Schuknecht's first otopathology exposure was with his mentors at the University of Chicago, where he worked under John Lindsay, Henry Perlman, Heinz Kobrak, and William Neck. It was with John Lindsay that Schuknecht saw the "logical continuity" of otopathology with an innovative clinical practice. Starting as fulltime faculty at the University of Chicago, he progressed to Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan in 1953. In 1961, he was recruited to the Chair of the Department of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Otolaryngology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Eventually, it was at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary that he conducted much of his pioneering work in otopathology for which he is remembered. His weekly "Sunday School" otopathology study sessions there are still fondly recalled. Joseph Nadol summed it up perfectly: "...Schuknecht reestablished the histologic and scientific basis for modern medical and surgical otologic intervention, based on his lifelong studies of human temporal bones."