Daniel Earl Polter, MD: a conversation with the editor

Daniel E. Polter, MD, and William C. Roberts, MD

Dr. Dan Polter was born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 17, 1933. When he was very young, he and his family moved to Norman, Oklahoma, and then to Dallas, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas in Austin in 1955, having majored in chemistry, and from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in 1959. His internship, residency, and chief residency in internal medicine were at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. From 1963 to 1965, he was in the Medical Corps of the US Army, stationed in Orleans, France. Thereafter, he spent 1 year in fellowship in gastroenterology at the Wadsworth Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in Los Angeles, returning to Dallas in 1966 as chief of gastroenterology at the VA Hospital. Four years later, he entered private practice and in 1971 became chief of gastroenterology at Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC). He remained in that position until 2003. In 1975, Dr. Polter became clinical professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. In 1990, he became president of the BUMC staff, and a year later, chairman of its medical board. In 1996 he was awarded the Distinguished Clinician Award of the American Gastroenterological Association. From 1998 until 2000, he was president of the Texas Society for Gastroenterology and Endoscopy; that organization gave him the Robert Nelson–Marcel Patterson Award in 2003. Additionally, Dan Polter is a wonderful human being. He and his lovely wife, Lucy, have 3 offspring. Dr. Polter has been an enormous credit to BUMC and one of its outstanding clinicians for nearly 40 years.