The career of Ellsworth C. “Buster” Alvord, Jr. (1923–2010) as a Neuropathologist, scientist and teacher spanned more than 5 decades and included serving as the President of the American Association of Neuropathologists in 1964. He attained his baccalaureate degree from Haverford College in Pennsylvania and earned his M.D. at Cornell University in 1946. Buster's internship and residency at New York Hospital were followed by his first academic appointment as Assistant in Pathology at that same institution. There he began his early research career investigating immune‐mediated injury to the CNS and wrote seminal works on inflammatory models of demyelinating disease (experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, EAE).
Following New York, he and his wife Nancy relocated to Walter Reed General hospital in 1948 to train in a Neurology residency. Following his residency, in 1950 he trained in Neuropathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. He then served as a Neurologist at Walter Reed for 3 years and subsequently as Chief of the Clinical Neuropathology Section of the National Institute of Neurologic Disease and Blindness. During this time he became faculty at George Washington University where he continued his research work on EAE. Buster considered his work on EAE as “the high point” of his scientific career publishing 8 manuscripts in Science and 3 in Nature. In 1955, he and his family moved to Baylor University in Houston where he met a Neurosurgery resident, Dr. Cheng‐Mei Shaw. The two formed a productive collaborative relationship and close friendship that lasted five‐and‐a‐half decades.
Buster, Cheng‐Mei and their families moved to the University of Washington in Seattle in 1960. While at UW, Buster was Chief of the Neuropathology Division and ran the clinical Neuropathology services and trained generations of neurology, neurosurgery and pathology residents and neuropathology fellows. During his tenure at UW he published over 200 additional scientific papers touching every corner of academic neurology and neuropathology and beyond.
In line with his amazing foresight and vision for burgeoning fields, Buster began working with colleagues in the Applied Mathematics department on the development of clinically useful mathematical models for glioma growth and invasion in the 1990s. This pioneering work led the way to the development of a completely new and novel area of research that is now a major focus of investigation. Buster worked diligently with colleague Dr. Kristin Swanson on the mathematical modeling of gliomas until the very end, spending much of his free time in her research lab challenging her and her students' understanding of the complicated disease.
Dr. Alvord was a consummate teacher of everyone from medical students to senior faculty. He had a knack for pushing his students to the limit of their knowledge and there he would start teaching. For example, Dr. Alvord presented a weekly braincutting conference at the medical examiner's office, and used every brain to discuss an anatomic concept. Cranial nerve nuclei were a favorite, but anything was possible. On particularly playful days, Buster would sometimes use post‐mortem changes, such as disruption during extraction, to trick unsuspecting residents and fellows into making profound gross diagnoses only to learn the lesion was a result of a new autopsy tech trainee trying unsuccessfully to extract brain and brainstem in one piece. For decades, he would take residents and fellows on 6 AM road trips to Pacific Northwest regional hospitals to perform brain cuttings free of charge and to teach outlying pathologists the gospel of Neuropathology. Another early morning activity found Buster teaching neuroanatomy at 6:30 AM to rapt crowds of residents. Methodically he taught his anatomic “rules of 3.” When he ran low on white board space, he would continue to sketch detailed anatomic diagrams on the walls where they can still be found today.
Intellectually engaged to the end, at the time of his death he had no fewer than four manuscripts in final preparation, including one that described the experience of stroke from his personal perspective as a patient.
Dr. Alvord had great respect for the power and nuances of the spoken word. Quality assurance conferences were always entertaining because one never knew what word Dr. Alvord would question. Common pitfalls for every new fellow included “brisk” mitotic activity, to which Buster would reply: “how many is brisk?” or “minimal” to which Buster would reply “where is the minimum?” One particularly amusing session focused around the word “incipient” which he concluded had no place in the pathology lexicon. He was so enthusiastic about teaching that he donated his brain to teaching with the instructions that it should be used for the benefit of all, the gift of a true teacher of Neuropathology to his students. Buster's enthusiasm for teaching was not limited by species. One day when Buster was in his 70's, a colleague from the pathology department happened upon Buster splashing about in a lake near his home with his new golden retriever. Bemused by the spectacle, his colleague asked, “What are you doing?” And, Buster said, “I have this new Golden Retriever and she won't swim. She can't be a Golden Retriever and not swim, so I am teaching her.”
Dr. Alvord and his family were generous donors to the Division of Neuropathology as well as the larger University of Washington community. Generations of Neuropathologists, Neurologists, Neurosurgeons, Neurooncologists and myriad researchers owe him and his family a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. Outside of Neuropathology he and his family were and continue to be generous patrons of the arts in Seattle. Indeed, the arts establishment is littered with dedications to him and his family.
Buster had a unique sense of style that set him apart and inspired equal parts of mirth and dismay to his more staid friends. At casual occasions he could be found sporting a brightly colored fleece jacket. At art events, an outlandish tie fastened with a yellow Scottie dog pin always accented his formal attire. And always white tube socks. He was a thoughtful scientist, keen researcher, outstanding diagnostic Neuropathologist, generous benefactor and giving teacher. For a man so rich in talents and achievements, so notable as a teacher and benefactor, he also will be remembered for his characteristic humility. We are all diminished by his passing, but are enriched by his life.
(written by Buster's most recent students among the Faculty of the Neuropathology Division at the University of Washington)