Tower renamed after live expert

Dr. Thomas E. Starzl received a unique present for his birthday this year.

As part of a… Dr. Thomas E. Starzl received a unique present for his birthday this year.

As part of a two-day-long celebration for Starzl’s 80th birthday, Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg announced that the first Biomedical Science Tower would now bear Starzl’s name.

“When the Biomedical Science Tower was built, it was hailed as a tangible symbol of our University’s commitment to scientific discoveries that would have vast benefits to humanity,” Nordenberg said in a press release issued by UPMC.

“That tower soon will bear the name of an extraordinary surgeon and scientist whose life’s work has saved and enhanced countless lives, whose achievements are a monument to both exceptional talent and uncompromising commitment, and whose vision continues to guide and inspire new generations of clinicians and researchers.”

The University currently has no plans to rename any of the other Biomedical Science Towers, according to Nordenberg.

Now known as the Thomas E. Starzl Biomedical Science Tower, the building is home to nine floors of laboratories for 21 different departments at Pitt, including an entire floor that has been reserved for the research of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, according to a Pitt press release.

Starzl was taken by surprise when he heard that he would now have a building named after him on campus.

“I was thunderstruck,” he said in an interview yesterday. “It really was very unexpected, but of course I was thrilled.”

Starzl has made a name for himself in the medical community as a leader in organ transplantation. In 1967, he performed the first-ever liver transplant.

“I began studying livers for a different purpose approximately 50 years ago, and in course of studying the blood supply to the liver, I developed liver transplantation as experimental model,” Starzl said. “Then I wondered if it could be used in the treatment in liver disease.”

Starzl said that it was a long road between his first attempt at liver transplantation and where the procedure is now.

In 1980, he devised an anti-rejection medication so that patients could receive a transplanted organ without their bodies attacking it. This led to a higher success rate for the procedure.

Starzl joined the staff at Pitt as a professor of surgery and chief of transplantation services at Presbyterian University Hospital, now UPMC Presbyterian, in 1981.

It was at this point in time that he pioneered UPMC’s liver transplant program. This program was the only one of its kind in the nation at the time.

In 1991, Starzl became the director of the University of Pittsburgh Transplantation Institute, which was renamed in his honor in 1996.

He has received other honors throughout his time at Pitt, such as being named 213th in the book “1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium.”

When asked about being ranked just above America’s second president, John Adams, Dr. Starzl replied, “Yes, but I was ranked below Adolf Hitler. I don’t know whether I belong there or not. I was surprised, but not thrilled like the way that I was when they handed me the building.”

Even though Starzl is now the namesake for the first Biomedical Science Tower, he said he does not receive any special treatment because of it.

“Of course I have to get permission to go in through the building,” he said. “There’s a guard that sits there and I still have to show my ID.”

In 2006, Starzl was presented with the National Medal of Science by President George W. Bush. It is the nation’s highest scientific honor, according to a press release issued by the University.

In addition to the news about the building, part of Starzl’s birthday celebration included a rendition of Mozart’s “La ci darem la mano,” or “We will give to one another our hands,” from the opera Don Giovanni.

The piece was “transplanted” onto organ and performed by Robert Sutherland Lord, a professor emeritus at Pitt and practiced organist who has performed more than 160 concerts.

Lord said he was commissioned by the Chancellor’s office to record a piece by Mozart.

“My response initially was first that I didn’t know what theme from Mozart to take,” Lord said. “He is one of our foremost composers of all time, so beautiful and melodic. I just said yes I would do it and got to work on it. I just let the ideas come to my head.”

After finally choosing a piece, Lord used the knowledge that he obtained concerning organ improvisation while studying in France under premier organist Jean Langlais to transpose the song.

“I wanted a theme that was generally familiar,” Lord said. “I wanted people to hear it and then be able to recognize what was happening to it. The actual performance was spontaneous, but to make anything spontaneous you have to have a little plan. On basis of skeleton of the piece I created the work.”