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Dov Front, Chairman of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and Geyser Professor of Radiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Israel Institute of Technology, passed away suddenly at his home on January 13, 2000. Dov was born in 1939 in Tel-Aviv, graduated from the prestigious Herzlia High School, and received his MD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After military service, Front began his residency in neurology at the Sheba Medical Center. During his training, he became interested in the pathophysiology of hydrocephalus and decided to pursue a PhD thesis on this subject at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, under the supervision of Professor Lourens Penning. Using radionuclide cysternography in his research, he became acquainted with nuclear medicine. He was attracted by the infinite research opportunities that this new specialty had to offer. He returned to Israel in 1972. Following renewed service in the Israeli Army, with the position of Commander of the Medical Officers Course, he founded the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, which became his scientific home throughout his prolific career.
Front soon established himself as a leading figure at Rambam and at the newly founded School of Medicine. He was one of the founding fathers of nuclear medicine in Israel, and his department evolved into the leading nuclear medicine center there. He was open minded and sought innovation. He was quick to apply new technologies and to investigate and expand their clinical uses. Yet he remained cautious, challenging the assessment of new techniques, never merely settling for what was fashionable.
For Front, excellence was not simply a word or an aspiration. It was the way he insisted that his department undertake both its clinical responsibilities and research. He never settled for less, and this became the standard in the department. He was proud, not only of the large number of studies that were performed daily in his department, but of the high level of patient care that was the...