Sohan Singh Hayreh, MD, PhD, FRCS, was a renowned ophthalmologist, clinician scientist, and professor emeritus of ophthalmology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. He died on September 29, 2022 at the age of 94.
Dr. Hayreh remained active in research and publishing well into his 90s. He was widely recognized as a pioneer in fluorescein angiography and a leading authority in vascular diseases of the eye and the optic nerve. His ophthalmology career spanned more than 60 years and encompassed basic, experimental, and clinical research.
Dr. Hayreh, an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, published more than 400 original peer-reviewed articles, 6 classical monographs and books, and over 50 book chapters.
In 1973, Dr. Hayreh joined the faculty of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine as professor and director of the ocular vascular clinic and ocular vascular research. He assumed emeritus status in 1999 to devote himself full-time to his research.
Dr. Hayreh was born in 1927, the eldest son in a farming family in a remote village in Punjab, India. After he attended local schools, his mother decided he should go to medical school because there were no physicians in the area. He completed his medical training in India and initially wanted to be a general surgeon.
In 1952, Dr. Hayreh joined the Indian Army Medical Corps, working part of the time as a general surgeon to help support his parents and younger brothers and sisters. He served in rough field conditions near the Pakistani border for more than 3 years.
When he had completed his military service, Dr. Hayreh was eager to pursue an academic and research career. “He then accepted in 1955 the only available academic position, which happened to be in the anatomy department of the newly opened Medical College in Patiala in Punjab,” said Jost B. Jonas, MD.
A lack of money for research never daunted him. In 1991, Dr. Hayreh recalled in “Adventure in 3 Worlds,” an article in Survey of Ophthalmology. “With the faintest of hopes, I wrote to the DuPont company asking if they could possibly send me some free samples of liquid latex, and they sent me 2 gallons, which was enough for my project (preparing vascular casts to study the anatomy of the vascular bed in the human). The rest, as they say, is history.”
A turning point in Dr. Hayreh’s career came in 1961, when he was awarded the prestigious Beit Memorial Research Fellowship for Medical Research; he moved to London to work with Sir Stuart Duke-Elder at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University of London. That research formed the basis of his PhD thesis from the University of London in 1965.
Dr. Hayreh then worked as a member of the academic staff of the University of London and the University of Edinburgh before joining the faculty at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.