Arthur Steindler. Orthopaedic scholar, teacher, and clinician

Arthur Steindler, a native of Austria, immigrated to the United States in 1907 and during the next 50 years he became very influential in the development of orthopaedics during the twentieth century. His life is a compelling example of how an individual can make major contributions to the advancement of medical science and practice. His clinical interests spanned the entire range of musculoskeletal disorders including developmental, genetic, infectious, neoplastic and neuromuscular diseases, and their operative and nonoperative treatment. He founded the clinical and academic Orthopaedic Surgery programs at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and directed their growth for 34 years. During that time his clinical work, scholarship, and teaching helped the University of Iowa become a national and international orthopaedic center. He helped establish a statewide system to provide medical care for indigent patients and personally treated more than 70,000 patients, many of them children crippled by polio, tuberculosis, spastic paralysis, scoliosis, congenital deformities, and degenerative neuromuscular diseases. To improve the function of the weakened and deformed limbs of the children, he devised various innovative operations. He wrote more than 130 papers and nine books in several languages on the natural history, etiology, and treatment of musculoskeletal diseases and injuries, pioneered the application of biomechanics to evaluation and treatment of musculoskeletal disorders, and wrote the first comprehensive text on the mechanics of human movement. He taught more than 300 orthopaedists, and when Ruth Jackson, the individual recognized as the first woman orthopaedic surgeon in the United States, decided to pursue a career in orthopaedics, she sought out Arthur Steindler and received her formal orthopaedic education under his direction. That Steindler accomplished so much after moving to the small midwestern town of Iowa City at the age of 37 is impressive, and clearly documents his remarkable abilities and determination.