Lucy Balian Rorke-Adams

Lucy Balian Rorke-Adams (born 1929) is an American pediatric neuropathologist who was president of the American Association of Neuropathologists in 1982. She also served as president of the medical staff at CHOP (1986-1988) Her father left Turkey for Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1913 on the advice of a German engineer who warned him that the Turkish government planned on exterminating the Armenians. On top of not knowing the language, she had to walk three miles to grade school each day, and this distance increased to five miles once she reached high school.

Balian relied on work to earn enough money to fund her education. As an undergraduate and graduate, to pay her tuition, she served as "girl friday" for a surgical supply salesman. Riggs died shortly after the book was written, without knowing it had been accepted for publication, In the mid-1970s, after several years of holding a part-time position at CHOP, she became co-investigator on a massive study of pediatric brain tumors, where she looked at 3300 brain tumors over a four-year period.

In 1972, the office of the medical examiner for the city of Philadelphia moved their location to PGH, bringing Rorke into close contact with forensic pathology for the first time. She also went on to become the acting chair of pathology from 1995 to 2001. In the 1990s, she presented a hypothesis on the origin of brain malformations arising in early human development: she proposed that disordered genetic control allows neurons to migrate to abnormal, disease-causing locations.

Rorke-Adams has been instrumental in donating significant artifacts to museum collections. As Chief of Pathology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Rorke-Adams was instrumental in preserving the contents of the Blockley "Dead House" of Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH). The original small brick building was used by Sir William Osler for autopsies. When it was torn down, Riggs had the contents moved to the Pathology building. When PGH closed in 1977, Riggs donated the Osler collection, including the autopsy table, instruments and records, to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Rorke-Adams had also obtained a set of 23 pairs of slides from the brain of Albert Einstein in the 1970s, and donated them to the Mutter Museum in November 2011. 2017, Outstanding Achievement Award, University of Minnesota Medical School 2010, named faculty chair in pediatric neuropathology created in her honor by Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) 2008, Richard D. Wood Distinguished Alumni Award, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia 2003, Provost's Award, University of Pennsylvania 1999, Award for Meritorious Contributions to Neuropathology, American Association of Neuropathologists 1982, President, American Association of Neuropathologists 1971, Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Personal life Lucy Balian married Robert Rorke on June 4, 1960. Rorke died in 2002, after the two had been married for nearly 42 years. In 2004, Lucy Balian Rorke married Boyce Adams, who had been a close friend of hers for many years. Adams died of metastatic cancer two years and two months after they were married, leaving Rorke-Adams widowed for the second time.