Eyeworld Supplements

LEADING A REVOLUTION 14 | SUPPLEMENT TO EYEWORLD Charles Kelman, MD (seated), and lab assistant Cheryl Jalbert (right) conducted research on lab animals at the Manhattan Eye, Ear, and roat Hospital before later performing the first phacoemulsification on a human subject in 1967. Source: A. Kelman AIOIS logo carving Source: Kenneth J. Hoffer, MD While the creation of AIOIS was certainly a professional endeavor, it was also personal. In 1974, just as Dr. Hoffer was pre- paring to perform his first IOL implant surgery—aer much re- search, preparation, and creating a formula for successful postop vision—his mother died. "My life went flat. is wom- an worked her whole life as a beautician to raise two boys. From where I started to becom- ing an eye surgeon, it sunk me into such a hole," Dr. Hoffer said. In the month following her death, Dr. Hoffer thought about how to honor his mother's leg- acy. "I said, 'I think I should start a society that has to do with lens implants and cataract surgery,'" Dr. Hoffer recalled, adding that the drive to honor his mother also spurred him to complete the lens power calculation he was working on at the time. To start AIOIS, as "a young kid, 2 years out of residency," was a bold move, but it's also, Dr. Hoffer thinks, what led to some of the Society's success in its first years. Because no one knew who he was—Dr. Hoffer hadn't yet made his mark in ophthalmol- og y—he was neutral, which he said was especially important be- cause there were different camps of ophthalmologists supporting phacoemulsification and others still doing only intracapsular ex- traction. Dr. Hoffer said he brought together John Darin, MD, Jer- emy Levenson, MD, and Steve Cooperman, MD. ese four men provided the initial seed funding to start the Society, for- mulated its name, and decided how it would be run. e Society was in- corporated on August 28, 1974. Dr. Hoffer said the original intent of AIOIS was to get those interested in in- traocular implants together. e founding executive officers consisted of Dr. Hoffer as president, Dr. Cooperman as vice president, Dr. Darin as secretary, and Dr. Levenson as treasurer. From there, a Scientific Advisory Board with 13 additional individuals were invited: Henry Hirschman, MD, Ralph Anderson Jr., MD, Ronald Barnet, MD, Robert Drews, MD, Miles Galin, MD, Tur- gut Hamdi, MD, Francis Hertzog Jr., MD, Norman Jaffe, MD, Richard Kratz, MD, James Little, MD, Dennis Shepard, MD, Bradley Straatsma, MD, JD, and Murry Weber, MD.

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