Dr. Henry H. Schmidek, 71, neurosurgeon

HENRY H. SCHMIDEK

The September arrival at England's Oxford University of internationally eminent neurosurgeon and researcher Henry H. Schmidek was eagerly anticipated.

"Dr. Schmidek's appointment was considered a coup," a university spokesman said in an e-mail about the university's success in getting Dr. Schmidek to serve as a visiting professor and lecturer.

Dr. Schmidek and his wife, Mary, were settling in for a year in a country he loved for its beauty and its people and where he had been educated as a young man. He "had planned many diverse contributions to British neurosurgery and the university," the spokesman said. "They will be the poorer."

Dr. Schmidek - who for 45 years had filled posts at a variety of medical venues and universities, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., and as a ship's doctor in the US Navy - died of a heart attack on October 26 at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He was 71.

As a young doctor at Mass. General, Dr. Schmidek had been mentored by Dr. William H. Sweet, the chief of neurosurgery, who died in 2001 at age 90.

The two neurosurgeons left a legacy. Their edited "Schmidek and Sweet's Operative Neurosurgical Techniques: Indications, Methods, and Results," now in its fifth edition, is considered the Bible for neurosurgeons. "It was a landmark book and is the most widely used textbook by every practicing neurosurgeon," said Dr. Perry Ball, a former colleague of Dr. Schmidek's at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

"The really striking thing about Henry's career," Ball said, "is that he was always thinking of what was next. With some surgeons, as their career matures, their focus becomes more narrow, whereas Henry was interested in new techniques and new problems and what could be done to solve them. He was always reading and studying."

Although Dr. Schmidek retired in 2005, he pursued his research, organizing symposiums on topics such as technology's role in the treatment of neurological problems and studying the relationship between autism and brilliance.

"Henry loved the nobility of medicine," the hundreds of residents he "pushed to strive . . . in their 70th hour of work that week," and the patients who put their lives in his hands, said Mary, his wife of 36 years.

"I'm humbled by the trust a patient puts in me," he told her.

When he was officially retired, Dr. Schmidek was able to throw himself into farming in Peacham, Vt., raising Kobe and Angus cattle, wearing boots, riding tractors, dropping in for chats with the mechanic at the garage and local farmers. Brigadoon Farm was his most recent address.

Dr. Schmidek was born in Peking, where he lived until he was 10 and his father was physician to the British community. He entered the University of Chicago at 15 and graduated with an honors degree in history. He then began his well-traveled career, spending a year at the University of London studying the history of medicine. He earned his medical degree at the University of Western Ontario in Canada in 1963. He did his first year of residency at the Royal Victoria Hospital at McGill University in Montreal and did further training at Mass. General.

Dr. Schmidek also served in the Navy at Chelsea Naval Hospital and as ship's doctor aboard the USS Boston.

"The first few years of his neurosurgical odyssey were spent around Boston at MGH, Mount Auburn Hospital, and at Emerson Hospital," his wife said. "He then became the youngest chairman of a neurosurgical department at that time at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia."

His first wife, Nancy Jamie Kurland, died when their two children were small. He met Mary Louise O'Donnell, an experimental psychologist at Mass. General, and they married in Weston in 1972.

As their family grew to four children, Dr. Schmidek's medical posts took them across New England. They lived in Marion while he was chief of neurosurgery at St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford, in Vermont when he was department chairman at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, and in New Hampshire when he was senior neurosurgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

In 1984, in order to share his knowledge and to learn more in an exchange with other surgeons, Dr. Schmidek instituted an annual course in neurobiology for neurosurgeons at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole.

Dr. Schmidek learned to sail and did so with his children in Marion.

"I was always terrified of the boat capsizing," recalled his daughter, Robyn Schmidek Lippert of Washington, D.C. "Dad's solution was, like his approach to everything in life, to provide a scientific explanation. In this case, that entailed his putting a tablespoon through the center of a wedge of cantaloupe to demonstrate the impossibility of it tipping over."

When she was 9 and her brother was 5, she said, their dad woke them up at 6 a.m. one morning to participate in a 10K road race. "Dad pointed to a random lady in the crowd of runners and advised us, "'Just follow that lady to the end."'

When they lived in Vermont, he also got his children to ski with him. "Dad gave us a real appreciation of the outdoors," said his son Ian of Weston.

Dr. Schmidek's greatest outdoor passion was fly-fishing, and his staunchest companion was his wife.

His death stunned friends who knew of his robust nature and zest for life. "So many bright and focused people like Henry become entirely narrow in their focus, but Henry was never limited," said Gary Speiss, a Marblehead attorney. "Henry was never limited and was quite at ease talking about any subject."

"Here he was at 71," Speiss said. "He could have abandoned an active life, but he never for a moment thought of doing it. He was in his 60s and still editing neurosurgery textbooks. Henry was like one of those bright comets that come along once in a while."

In addition to his wife, daughter, and son, Dr. Schmidek leaves another daughter, Alexandra of Seattle; another son, Jared of Ludlow, Vt.; and two grandsons.

A celebration of his life will be held today at 11 a.m. in First Parish Church in Weston. A private burial service will be held near his favorite trout pond.