It’s a popular, but trite, tribute to say someone “wrote the book on [fill in the blank].” It’s usually not a statement of fact, however.
A rare exception would be to say, “Peter Rosen wrote the book on emergency medicine” because, in fact, Peter Rosen, MD really was responsible for the first comprehensive textbook in emergency medicine (Rosen’s Emergency Management: Concepts and Clinical Practice, the first edition of which was published in 1983).
A longstanding advocate for emergency medicine even before that, he’s credited by some as being instrumental in seeing that discipline recognized as a proper specialty.
It’s no surprise, then, that when the founders of The Journal of Urgent Care Medicine set out to form their first Advisory Board, Dr. Rosen was at the top of the wish list. We invited him, he graciously accepted, and we were proud to have his name on our Masthead from that first issue until his death. He even flattered us by serving as a peer reviewer from time to time—though the argument could be made that he was peerless.
Dr. Rosen died at his home in Tucson, AZ on November 11, 2019. He was 84 years old.
Since then, his contributions to the practice of medicine have been lauded by every conceivable EM body in the United States, as well as the medical schools he was affiliated with over the years (Harvard University and the University of Arizona prominent among them). We would be remiss if we didn’t do the same, and thank him posthumously for lending significant academic weight and goodwill to a fledgling publication. We’re pleased and fortunate to have been associated with him.