By Clark M. Blatteis

I was Andrej’s postdoc mentor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, from 1991 to 1994. He came to me with a very good theoretical background in thermal physiology...(continue)

...and excellent practical experience, having already worked with other, well-regarded thermophysiologists in the USSR, Belarus, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

In my lab, he developed his interest in fever research, which was my forte, so much so that it eventually became his own forte as well and grew him into a serious competitor of mine! Actually, I take this outcome as a mark of my own success in preparing him for his independent career and I am very proud of his accomplishments in the field over the years since then. I visited Andrej’s lab in Portland in 1998 and presented a seminar there, but have not been to his lab in Phoenix. We have two co-workers in common, Alex Steiner, who undertook a portion of his doctoral thesis in my lab in 1999, then later joined Andrej in Phoenix for his postdoctoral research, and Camila Almeida, on whose doctoral thesis committee I served and who is with Andrej at this writing. However, Andrej and I have not collaborated directly in the lab since his departure from Memphis.

My own story in the context of this page is fairly typical of that of other scientists of my generation – an uninterrupted 52-year, relatively productive career as a thermal physiologist, first in the US Army for three years (drafted – Universal Military Training was the law!), then two years as a postdoc (one in the Andes of Peru and the other at Oxford in the UK), three more years in the Army as a civilian worker (Natick), and finally 42 years at Tennessee. The details of my activities over all these years (and earlier) have recently been reported in a profile in Advances in Physiology Education and appeared online in connection with the American Physiological Society’s “Living History of Physiology Project”. I retired on October 1, 2008, but only half-way as I am continuing to write, review and edit. I have a new title in addition to emeritus, “University Distinguished Professor”, and I have a nice, new, bright office in which to carry on with my “work”.

May, 2009