Hans Goldmann's golden year in St. Louis: daily research bench rounds with the master!

The late Prof. Dr. Hans Goldmann took a well-earned year of sabbatical leave, shortly after having stepped down as Rector Magnificus of the University of Berne, Switzerland and from his Chairmanship of the Department of Ophthalmology in the School of Medicine at the University of Berne, Switzerland. Hans spent that sabbatical year at the Department of Ophthalmology at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, MO. He and Bernard Becker (and many of us in the Department) were longtime associates and friends. And what a year it was! Those who were present still speak of it with awe and respect. What fun, what excitement - what work! Each of us had a variety of fascinating personal interactions with Hans. However, a single set of salient experiences stands out in all of our memories! Earlyon, he established a daily routine of going from laboratory to laboratory on the 10th and 11th floors of McMillan Hospital in order to conduct daily bench rounds with each of the individual faculty/investigators. Mornings, he would appear in a well pressed and fresh lab coat, greet us with a gleaming smile, and upon entry into your lab, he would ask, "Huh, Huh, so what's new today?" And it was expected that you would have new data, or experimental results to show to him! He would then ask penetrating questions about your work, techniques employed, the data presented, etc., as well as make suggestions for improvements. He also usually had some kind words of encouragement. If you did not have something new, he had something new and exciting to tell you of his own! Questions on the latter were almost always considerably more difficult to answer, than if you had something new to offer! As a result, the research faculty and staffs were literally driven to a creative frenzy in order to have something new to discuss or to demonstrate when the good Professor made his anticipated daily entry into the laboratory. The faculty operated in high gear. Every morning, the techs would lean out of our doors, and indicate to their investigator toiling away, "He is coming very soon; he is in the next lab now!" Oh, to finish in time!