Benjamin F. Rush, Jr. MD. Collection, A Guide to the

Benjamin Franklin Rush, Jr., was born January 14, 1924 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His family bears no relationship to the famous 18 century physician. He received an A.B. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1944, and a M.D. degree from Yale in 1948. During the Korean conflict, Dr. Rush was assigned to a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) and then to a surgical research unit. From 1954 to 1957, he received surgical training at the Sloan Kettering Division, Medical College, and Cornell University. In 1957, Dr. Rush was an instructor of surgery and assistant professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University; where later he became an assistant professor of surgery from 1959 to 1962.

Dr. Rush moved in 1962 to the University of Kentucky at Lexington, where he was appointed an associate professor of surgery at the new College of Medicine. The college recruited students mainly from rural communities. His varied work at the University of Kentucky included research in the areas of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock, and renal physiology. The Army and National Institute of Health (NIH) supported this research. Dr. Rush was made professor of surgery at the University of Kentucky.

In the spring of 1969, he accepted the chairmanship of the Department of Surgery, New Jersey Medical School, at the New Jersey College of Medicine & Dentistry, a forerunner to UMDNJ. At that time, the house staff was comprised primarily of foreign residents. By 1982, the surgical training program had recruited a house staff drawn totally from American medical schools. Also between 1969 and 1982, annual grant support increased from zero to $1 million, one half of this funding from NIH. In 1980-1981, the Department of Surgery, under Dr. Rush's leadership, was responsible for more than 300 publications.

Dr. Rush has held two chairs at UMDNJ: the Johnson & Johnson Chair from 1971 to 1980 and the Wesley Howe Chair from 1988 to 1991. He is held in high regard nationally for his research activity in the two areas of fluid balance and renal physiology in relation to surgery, and surgical oncology. After Dr. Rush stepped down as department chair, he remained on the faculty as a Distinguished Professor of Surgery before retiring from active faculty on June 30, 1996.