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Former Harvard Medical Dean Daniel Tosteson Dies

Jun 03, 2009

Daniel Tosteson, a former dean of Harvard Medical School who served from 1977 to 1997, died from complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 84. During his decades at the helm of Harvard Med, Tosteson changed how medicine was taught as he embraced case-based learning, reports the New York Times. In 1980, Tosteson established a department of genetics - one of the first in the country - and he also created departments of cell biology, biological chemistry, and molecular pharmacology, as well as ones for health care policy and social medicine. Tostenson had "an incessant, passionate curiosity for how the natural world works, coupled with a passionate compassion for other human beings and an earnest desire to understand them," his son Joshua tells the Boston Globe.

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