THE TRAILBLAZERS ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON MEDICAL SCHOOL Roger Duvoisin, MD: A Village in Italy and a Relentless Scientific Curiosity Revolutionize Research into Parkinson’s Disease W B Y LY N D A RUDOLPH 18 Robert Wood Johnson I MEDICINE hen Roger Duvoisin was serving as a young corpsman on a hospital ship in 1945, he didn’t know that his career would become enmeshed in research that would forever change how the world looks at Parkinson’s disease. It was long before he would go to medical school. And years before H. Houston Merritt, MD, would recruit him to be the first fellow of the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation at Columbia University. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Roger Duvoisin, MD—by then professor and chair, Department of Neurology, and director of the William Dow Lovett Center for Neurogenetics—ignited a genetic breakthrough in Parkinson’s disease that revolutionized scientific thought and medical history. And he did it here. At Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.