Juan Rosai, 'master of the neoplastic universe'

For those like me, lucky enough to have been a student of Juan Rosai, MD, and to have heard him speak, the experience will never be forgotten. [...]it is that when I learned of his death in July, at age 79,1 could recall descriptions and notations, questions and curiosities, inquisitive and piercing words spoken in a distinctive Italian-Argentinian voice that would usher us-me and a handful of other residents at Yale New Haven Hospital from 1988 to 1991, and others before and after-into the world of surgical pathology. [...]to those who studied with him he was perhaps better known for his weekly gross and microscopic resident conferences, question-and-answer sessions that would delve into morphologic mimics, the embryologic manifestations of tumors, divergent and mixed differentiation-mesenchymal, endothelial, epithelial, acinar, oncocytic, anaplastic, neuroendocrine, and so on-and the clinical and radiologic features related to their pathologic morphology. (Dr. Rosai helped develop Impath in New York City, which Genzyme Corp. acquired in 2003 to build its Genzyme Genetics business unit.) There Dr. Rosai reviewed notable papers written by five of his residents or fellows, each of which defined new entities described and characterized over his career.1"5 The historical recap, including Dr. Rosai's tribute to the significant contributions of William Gerald, MD, a Rosai fellow and faculty member at MSK who died prematurely of cancer in 2008, was a tour de force.