Joseph B. Martin

Joseph Boyd Martin, (born October 20, 1938 in Bassano, Alberta) is the Edward R. and Anne G. Lefler Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Prior to that, he served as the Dean of Harvard Medical School before stepping down on June 30, 2007.

Martin completed undergraduate studies and medical school at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. He was the first in his extended family to further his education beyond high school. He also completed some undergraduate studies at Eastern Mennonite College, since renamed Eastern Mennonite University. Subsequent to his medical school graduation, he completed his residency in neurology at Case Western Reserve University and received his Ph.D. in anatomy from the University of Rochester.

Martin's first faculty position was at McGill University, where he rose to become Chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the young age of 38, only five years following completion of his Ph.D. He subsequently joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where he chaired the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, succeeding renowned neurologist Raymond Adams. During his tenure at MGH, he also served as interim director of the hospital, where his administrative and leadership qualities led him to become on the short list for a number of high-ranking jobs.

In this context, Martin became Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco in 1989 and then became that institution's Chancellor. He spent a total of eight years there, during which he became less involved in benchtop science and clinical medicine, although both remained a passion. With respect to the former, Martin's lab at MGH, under the lead direction of James Gusella, Ph.D., was the first to identify a biomarker that soon thereafter led to location of the gene for Huntington's disease, a major breakthrough at the time and one of the first demonstrations of a true connectivity between genetics and disease. At UCSF he was instrumental in identifying new research space and building new research facilities despite limited available areas and significant neighborhood pushback, which Martin worked through with his characteristic ability to build consensus.

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