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Neil Lempert '54

Nov. 25, 1933-Dec. 6, 2022

Neil Lempert ’54, P’85 died on Dec. 6, 2022. Born on Nov. 25, 1933, in Astoria, Queens, he came to Hamilton from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. On the Hill, he majored in chemistry and biology to prepare for medical school. A member of Delta Phi fraternity, he held four offices within it: treasurer, secretary, rushing chairman, and policy advisor. 

He played on the junior varsity tennis team during his first two years and on the informal varsity squash team in his final three years. He was a member of The Spectator’s staff during his first three years and joined the Biology Club his last three years. Early on, Neil made his mark academically by winning the Golding Essay Prize as a freshman and the Cobb Essay Prize as a sophomore.

From Hamilton, Neil proceeded to Albany Medical College. He was drawn to the newly emerging field of transplant surgery and, as part of his training, was for one year a research fellow in transplant surgery at Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, N.Y. During his medical training he met Judith Levine, a resident of Schenectady. They were married there on Oct. 22, 1961, and had four daughters and a son.

His surgical residency complete, Neil joined the Army in July 1965 and was initially assigned as a captain to do research at the burn unit of Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. After six months he was reassigned to the 249th Hospital in Tokyo where his patients were all soldiers who’d been medevaced from Vietnam. An excerpt from a lengthy poem he composed for his 50th reunion yearbook summed up that experience: “I was off to the ‘Land of the Rising Sun.’/As the casualties poured in, it wasn’t much fun/They arrived in batches. 150 a pop./We had 1,500 beds, and they filled without stop.” 

Following two years of military service, Neil returned to Albany Medical College as a faculty member in 1967. The reunion poem addressed his subsequent career: “The renal transplants I started in ’67 at Albany Med./Were one of the early programs to ‘get off the bed’/The road to surgical professorship was difficult at the very best/Time-consuming and demanding with little time to rest./For the next 25 years (1967-92) my time was not my own/Patient care, clinical surgery, and research were frankly my home.”

During the course of those 25 years, Neil’s time was indeed full. He founded the section of transplant surgery at the Albany Medical Center in 1969 and served as its director until 1992. He rose to professor of surgery in 1978. In tandem with his clinical and administrative work, he conducted basic research in his field and produced 91 peer-reviewed publications as either sole author or co-author. All addressed issues pertaining to organ transplantation and its close ally, immunology. 

Throughout this time, Neil was also a teacher, mentoring medical students, especially surgical residents, and overseeing the work of summer research fellows in his laboratory. Their work, under his direction, often resulted in award-winning publications.

Neil also served his profession. He was secretary of the Albany chapter of the Alpha Omega Medical Honorary Society from 1985 to 1989 and was a counselor until 2019. In this latter role, which extended into his retirement years, he mentored many outstanding students and residents. To acknowledge their debt to him, they established the Neil Lampert Professorship in Surgery in 2005 and in 2019 established the Judith and Neil Lampert, MD ’58 Endowed Scholarship Fund.

Neil’s loyalty to Hamilton was reflected in how he served the College: volunteering for two capital campaigns, being on the Alumni Council and an officer of the Alumni Association, joining his class and reunion gift committees, and acting as a Career Center volunteer. Why such loyalty? His 50th reunion poem says it all: “At Stuyvesant High School they told me to go/To Hamilton College ‘it’s the best’ don’t you know./So I went to the ‘Ivory Tower’ on the top of the Hill/and worked like a beaver avoiding the kill./Loaded for bear with biochem and the like/Harvey Cameron’s ‘physic’ almost gave me a fright/Fond memories of Nick Gerold and ‘ole’ Doc Hess/reaffirmed my urge to be a physician, I need not guess/when Walter Norton showed me his slide of green penicillin mold/I knew that in medicine I wanted to grow old.”

Neil Lempert is survived by his wife, four daughters, including Elizabeth Markowitz ’85, and nine grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son.

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