A L U M N I P R O F I L E A CD from a Notable MD H musing about life. B Y LY N D A e is perhaps the only person who has or ever will have created both a book about surgery and songs about the beach on iTunes. That’s because when he’s not performing resections of neuro- endocrine tumors, F. Charles Brunicardi, MD ’80, professor, Moss Foundation Chair in Gastrointestinal and Personalized Surgery, and vice chair, Department of Surgery, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is strumming his vintage 1954 Gibson guitar and musically PHOTOS COURTESY OF F. CHARLES BRUNICARDI, MD ’80 Dr. Brunicardi is a New Jersey guy. He attended North Plainfield High School and played in the All-State Stage Band in the 1970s. He and his brother Edward even wrote a musical together that was performed at Monsignor Donovan High School on the Jersey Shore. Performing helped him pay his way through college and medical school. Between 1977 and 1978, he toured England, playing at the Troubadour and the Roundhouse and performing at the Cambridge Folk Festival—where he rubbed shoulders with the headliners Richie R U D O L P H Havens and Don McLean. Next came a recording contract with the Robert Stigwood Organization—better known then as RSO Records. But medicine was calling, and Dr. Brunicardi graduated from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, then Rutgers Medical School, in 1980 and began what has been a brilliant career, including a lengthy stay at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston as the DeBakey-Bard Chair, Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery; pancreatic cancer research funded by the National Institutes of Health; the position of editor-in-chief of the textbook Schwartz’s Principles of Surgery; and work on more than 270 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Brunicardi’s debut album—entitled Where Sunset Meets the Beach— is about family and friends and in large part happened because of them. Dr. Brunicardi’s sister Pat was instrumental in getting the songs online at ReverbNation.com, where they picked up a respectable 3,000 fans and 16,000 hits. Contacts through friends brought some highly regarded musicians into recording sessions, includ- 50 Robert Wood Johnson I MEDICINE