Dr. Ian Thomas Jackson (1934–2020): A “Messiah” of the Deformed

Summary:

Ian Thomas Jackson was born and bred in Scotland and eventually settled in the United States. He rose to dizzying heights in his career due to his role in shaping the specialty of craniofacial surgery, not only in the United States but in the rest of the world. Jackson was first missed in Scotland, which lost this talented surgeon to America very early in his career; now this is everyone's loss, as we will all miss him forever. He was a skilled surgeon, great friend, and wonderful human being who touched the lives of innumerable patients with difficult deformities around the world. He never let any constraints affect his philanthropy and ushered a boy in Peru who had been abandoned by his parents through 80 operations, with a later adoption into the Jackson family, which is remarkable and unmatched by anyone even today. Jackson left indelible marks on the history and development of plastic surgery around the world and especially India, where he was introduced by Prof. Ramesh Chandra of Lucknow. The trailblazing and successful craniofacial surgeries conducted by Dr. Jackson in North India in the 1980s eventually opened the doors to the intriguing world of craniofacial surgery for the Indian plastic surgeon diaspora. He is in true sense a “messiah” of the deformed.

Ian Thomas Jackson (Fig. 1) was born in 1934 in Scotland. He completed his undergraduate medical training at the University of Glasgow and surgical residency at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and became a consultant at Glasgow in 1969. At that time he was well known for his innovative work in treating children born with cleft lip and palate. In 1979 he moved to Rochester and became the Chairman of the Department of Plastic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic. He started several training fellowships for students and residents in plastic surgery, and Mayo Clinic soon became the most preferred destination for learning plastic surgery. He was on the editorial board of many journals of plastic surgery, and we remember him especially as the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Plastic Surgery. He mentored and developed this journal for decades and it was the dream of every resident in plastic surgery to get published in this particular journal.

Fig. 1.

Portrait of Dr. Ian T. Jackson.

Dr. Jackson moved to Michigan in 1989 and established the Craniofacial Institute at the Providence Hospital. He continuously developed, nurtured, and advanced the specialty of craniofacial surgery not only in the United States but also in many distant centers around the world. His main areas were cleft lip and palate, craniofacial surgery, and skull base surgery, for which he is well known globally as a master tutor, craftsman, and surgeon par excellence. He published extensively and is known for many landmark articles like the one on groin flaps, and his book Local Flaps in Head and Neck Reconstruction remains a popular text in plastic surgery.

In his glittering and busy career, he received many awards from all over the world and was a member of innumerable societies and associations of and related to the specialty of plastic surgery. He was a skilled surgeon and had a great knack for molding various tissues of the body so as to make the reconstructed area both aesthetically and functionally perfect.

He was a great philanthropist and was always ready to help patients with deformities from underdeveloped countries. He won worldwide accolades when he reconstructed a 3-year-old Peruvian child with as many as 80 operations and later on adopted him. This became the subject of an award-winning BBC documentary and the film The Boy David Story. He was also the Honorary Chairman of Smile Train, the international charity helping with free surgery of children born with cleft lip and palate deformity.

His first foray in India was in the spring of the year 1987, when he was invited by Dr. Ramesh Chandra, Chief of Plastic Surgery at King George’s Medical College, Lucknow, to visit the department and perform demonstrative craniofacial surgery. This event can be considered as the start of craniofacial surgery in India, where there were thousands of patients with these deformities but very few trained surgical hands to operate. Dr. Jackson operated for 2 days and demonstrated difficult craniofacial cases to the residents and students, including the author who was a third year medical student at that time and had the opportunity to be in the surgical team. My first encounter with him made me decide what I wanted to be in my future career.

After this event, Dr. Jackson became a regular feature in most of the Indian national plastic surgery conferences until the very last. He always made it a point to travel to India every year, often with this wife Marjorie accompanying him, who equally relished Indian culture and cuisine (Fig. 2). He became very accustomed to the Indian culture and developed a strong liking for the spicy Indian cuisine and sweet Indian beer. He never missed a jiggle at the conference dance discos, where everyone liked to groove with him to the beats of the popular foot-tapping Indian chartbusters.

Fig. 2.

Photograph of Dr. Ian T. Jackson and Marjorie, with Dr. Ramesh Chandra and family at his home in India during one of the informal dinners. From left to right: Dr. Dubin, Dr. Dubin’s daughter, Dr. Ramesh Chandra, Dr. Sanjeev Agarwal, Dr. Ian T. Jackson, Dr. Rajiv Agarwal, Marjorie, Dr. Padam K. Agarwal, and Dr. Dubin’s wife.

Over these years, he molded and transformed Indian plastic surgery with his teachings, lectures, and operative sessions so much so that he mentored a galaxy of Indian plastic surgeons who had the opportunity to come close to his penumbra of knowledge and radiance. On the personal front he was a thorough gentleman with chiseled Scottish charming features, glowing personality, always well dressed both at formal and casual events, and had an affectionate baritone of voice, which made him instant friends with anybody. He will be remembered and cherished for many, many years, not only by his family and friends in his home country, but also around the world by thousands of surgeons on whom he has left his indelible impressions.

In his later days, he was challenged with Alzheimer’s disease for many years with failing physical strength, but even then he never lost his touch of scientific teaching and used to guide residents and researchers till the very last. Ian Jackson is survived by his wife, Marjorie, children (Linda, Susan, Sarah, Andrew and David), son and daughter-in-law (Modathir Bougrine, Shelley Miller Jackson), and his three grandchildren, Max, Isabel, and Morag.

We pray for peace to the departed soul, to “Jai Kishan,” as he was popularly called in India.