Juan Rosai

Juan Rosai (August 20, 1940 – July 7, 2020) was an Italian-born American physician who contributed to clinical research and education in the specialty of surgical pathology. He was the principal author and editor of a major textbook in that field, and he characterized novel medical conditions such as Rosai-Dorfman disease and the desmoplastic small round cell tumor. Rosai is also well-known because of his role as teacher, mentor and consultant to many American and international surgical pathologists.

Early life and education Juan Rosai was born in Poppi, a little town near Florence, province of Arezzo, in the region of Tuscany, Italy. His original first name was Giovanni Rosai, but after his family settled in Argentina his first name was changed to the equivalent Spanish name Juan. Subsequently, he remained on the faculty of Washington University until 1974 when, at the age of 34, Rosai was appointed Professor & Director of Anatomic Pathology at the University of Minnesota. He left there in 1985 for an identical position at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, where he stayed until 1991. including the seminal descriptions of entities such as sinus histiocytosis with massive lymphadenopathy (Rosai-Dorfman disease), desmoplastic small round cell tumor, spindle-cell epithelial tumor with thymus-like differentiation of the thyroid, and sclerosing angiomatoid nodular transformation of the spleen. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Surgical Pathology until 2014 and served as a member of the editorial boards of several other pathology journals. Rosai was also Editor-in-Chief of the 3rd Series of the Atlas of Tumor Pathology of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), and author of AFIP fascicles on Tumors of the Thymus and Tumors of the Thyroid Gland, and a book on the history of American surgical pathology called Guiding the Surgeon's Hand. He has also edited or co-edited 13 other books. The collection consists of 18,439 cases originally presented at 1,495 pathology seminars, and comprises digital images of the original histopathological slides, clinical history, and diagnostic summaries, along with commentaries by Rosai and other experts.

Professional awards and honors In appreciation of his contributions to pathology, Rosai has received formal recognition from academic institutions around the world, as follows: Life Trustee of the American Board of Pathology; Doctorate Honoris Causa at the University of Bologna, Italy (1988); Maude Abbott Lecturer at the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, Toronto, Canada (1995); Doctorate Honoris Causa at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain (1999); Doctorate Honoris Causa at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina (2000); Honorary Membership in the Royal College of Pathologists, England (2001); Fred Waldorf Stewart Award of the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, New York (2006); Doctorate Honoris Causa at the University of Ioannina, Greece (2007); Mastership from the American Society for Clinical Pathology, 2007 Distinguished Pathologist Award of the Council of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, Washington, D.C. (2010)