Anthony Whittemore '66

By Emily Groff

Thirty years ago, Anthony Whittemore joined the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, as an associate surgeon. Today, the hospital is called Brigham & Women’s and Whittemore is its chief medical officer. He is responsible for clinical care and educational programs in the 750-bed hospital. He works to improve physician performance and patient safety and makes sure physicians are up to date in their knowledge and training.

Whittemore remembers his time at Trinity, where he played varsity sports and sang in The Pipes, fondly. He says the biology courses he took “set me up for medical school.” He also recalls two classes outside his field of study—a Shakespeare course and a course on existentialism—that “enabled me to look beyond the test tube.” After his graduation, Whittemore attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where he also did his residency.

He then served for two years in the U.S. Navy, where he was the chief of vascular surgery for the Sixth Fleet at the Naval Regional Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia. In 1979, he moved north, began work at Brigham, and started teaching surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Whittemore is a vascular surgeon, and works with “all the arteries that connect to the heart but not the heart itself.” Vascular surgeons prevent strokes by cleaning the carotid artery and repairing arteries that have become narrowed, restricting blood flow, or dilated from aneurysms. They also perform bypasses around the kidney and other organs to maintain adequate blood flow.

Vascular surgery split from general surgery as it became more specialized and required increased training. In 1990, Brigham & Women’s Hospital followed the trend and created a vascular surgery division, with Whittemore as the director. When the hospital opened a vascular center, Whittemore became its director. He stepped down from that position to become the hospital’s chief medical officer in 1999.

Whittemore is a member of 20 professional societies and has written more than 100 scientific papers and an equal number of textbook chapters. He only stopped practicing surgery this year, at age 65. But he remains active, overseeing the hospital and teaching at Harvard. He is also the current president of the American Surgical Association, which he notes “ain’t bad for a Trinity boy.”