Revista Americana de Medicina Respiratoria - Volumen 23, Número 1 - March 2023

Obituario

Nicholas P. Rossi (1925/2022)

Nick Rossi, cardiothoracic surgeon, professor of Surgery and close friend of Argentina, died last November 5 in Iowa City (IA, USA ), in whose university hospital he had worked most of his life. Throughout successive visits to our country, beginning in the early 1980s, he not only sowed his firm clinical/surgical knowledge, but also demonstrated the profound modesty of his scientific spirit by discussing on an equal footing and adopting behaviors in common with those of us who were well below his academic height. It is that, just as he was an avid reader in matters of general knowl­edge, he had the singular simplicity –as a true educated man– of always being willing to learn more. He began his surgical training at the dawn of cardiac surgery, when extracorporeal circulation began in his country. But at the same time, he had a very important experience in tuberculosis surgery and general tho­racic surgery, both at the Oakdale tuberculosis hospital, and at the Veterans Hospital attached to the Iowa University Hospital and Clinics, the main center of his technical and teaching work. The ease with which he discussed cases and the easy calm with which he operated were daily testimonials to his knowledge. As soon as he got to know our country, he acquired a special affection for these lands that, surely, would evoke his ancestral Italian character. With that proverbial modesty, he exchanged concepts and tackled new topics with both clinicians and surgeons. In addition to the oncology discipline, his interest in functionally less aggressive techniques in the thoracic area was a special encouragement for those of us who were trying to develop them. But beyond that, Nick Rossi was a humanist. A profound student of almost everything, a music lover who was particularly knowledgeable about opera, a distinguished thinker about the real problems of our culture, he was not satisfied with a merely passive attitude. In that order, supporting his wife Helen, he was always with those most in need in an exemplary organic way in the field of health. But also, and in accordance with his inherited Faith –which he cultivated with intellectual refinement and a deep sense of truth– he founded the Newman Catholic Center for the students of the University of Iowa, where he worked until his last days. When he found out about his final illness, which fortunately lasted very little, he said goodbye to his friends with a brief message: “Thank you for everything”. Expression of a man out of the ordinary.