Overview

This award is given in even number years to recognize a senior scientist, clinician, or educator who has made significant contributions to the understanding of the musculoskeletal system and musculoskeletal diseases and injuries.

The award winner is selected through a two-step process. The University of Iowa nominating committee, made up of department leadership, past awardees, and society presidents, solicits and reviews nominations of internationally recognized orthopaedic leaders, giving strong consideration to women and underrepresented minorities. From this review, 3–5 nominees are recommended to the ORS presidential line, which makes the final selection.

Named for Arthur Steindler, MD, orthopaedic surgeon, scientist and teacher, the Award is given every other year to recognize senior scientists, clinicians and educators who, throughout their professional lifetime, have made significant contributions– nationally and internationally–to the understanding of the musculoskeletal system and musculoskeletal diseases and injuries. The awardee must have started their professional careers outside the US, and have advanced their specialty throughout the world. The selection is made by the Board of Directors of the ORS upon recommendation of the ORS President.

About Arthur Steindler, MD

Born in 1878, Arthur Steindler was raised in Vienna and immigrated to the United States in 1907 after completing medical training at the University of Vienna. Before coming to the UI in 1913, Steindler practiced at the Chicago Home for Crippled Children and taught at the Drake Medical School in Des Moines.

Steindler was instrumental in the passage of two Iowa laws that significantly altered the state’s health care landscape: the 1915 Perkins Act, which authorized state payment for medical treatment at UI Hospitals and Clinics for children younger than 16, and the 1919 Haskell-Claus Act, which extended state-supported medical care at UI Hospitals to all indigent adults. When construction on the new Children’s Hospital of Iowa was completed in 1920, Steindler became chief surgeon and was put in charge of the growing orthopaedic surgery service. When the Children’s Hospital of Iowa moved to newer facilities in 1978, the original building was renamed the Steindler Building.

Steindler was acknowledged by his peers as a pioneer in clinical and research advances in orthopaedic surgery and rehabilitation. He also championed the incorporation of an emphasis on basic sciences and the natural history of diseases into orthopaedics education for medical students and in the training of orthopaedics residents. His research studies and medical textbooks were widely published and used by generations of medical students and residents nationwide.