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Arnold Mittelman, UB, RPCI researcher
A memorial service will be held in June at the Chautauqua Institution for Arnold Mittelman, a former Roswell Park Cancer Institute physician and researcher, and research associate professor of surgery at UB, who died on Feb. 3 in Wilmington, Del. He was 83.
Mittelman earned his medical degree from Columbia University in 1954, interned at Johns Hopkins and served his residency at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.
He joined RPCI in 1961 as an associate cancer research surgeon, later becoming assistant director of the general clinical research center and then chief of the colorectal service in the surgical oncology department.
Though his research interests focused on molecular biology, clinical pharmacology and colorectal surgery, Mittelman’s knowledge spanned the spectrum of cancer medicine and research. He published more than 200 articles and abstracts in peer-reviewed journals and co-wrote “Chemotherapy of Urogenital Tumors” with Gerald P. Murphy, former director of RPCI. He was one of only two clinicians who served as a program leader on Roswell Park’s first cancer center support grant.
Mittelman also conducted the first clinical trials of photodynamic therapy, which led to the use of the treatment worldwide for several types of cancers.
He co-founded RPCI’s Jurassic Society to keep retired faculty involved with the institute. Originally a social group, the society evolved to sponsor an annual lecture series.
Mittelman retired from RPCI in the late 1980s. In 1991, both UB and Roswell Park gave him the title of professor emeritus of surgery.
He moved to Delaware in 2001.