[The "top ten" of Finnish medicine]

In the early 1980s the Wellcome Institute was planning a biographical dictionary on the world's most eminent physicians. The quota reserved for Finland was ten names, and having been asked by Dr. Karin Johannisson, Uppsala, to participate in the project, I undertook the task of choosing them and providing a short biography of each. For this, I asked the advice of ten experts on the history of Finnish medicine, and a "top ten" list was then compiled. The list extended from Johan Haartman, "the father of Finnish medicine", till the Nobel Prize winner Ragnar Granit and the famous pediatrist Arvo Ylppo, who were still alive in the 1980s. The biographies were sent to the editor of the dictionary, but it seems that the work was never published. As I had saved all my correspondence about the matter, it seemed now, fifteen years afterwards, interesting to publish a short report of the project, including an account of how the "top ten" list had been achieved.