The 2024 Charles Snyder Lecturer:

Curtis E. Margo, M.D., M.P.H.

Jonas Friedenwald, Eugene Wolff, and the
Two Books that Helped Bridge the Specialty Gap

Curtis E. Margo was born in Hollywood, California and raised in the shadow of the control tower of the LAX. He attended public schools in Los Angeles from kindergarten (Erwing Street Elementary School) through high school (Westchester HS). He majored in biology at the University of Southern California while working  two afternoons a week as a tour guide at the Museum of Science and Industry, and on weekends as an emergency room orderly at Daniel Freedman Hospital in Englewood. After graduation from Emory University School of Medicine, he completed a rotating internship at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, followed by residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at Emory University Hospital. In his free time, he worked evenings as an emergency room physician at Dekalb Medical Center. In the year before starting his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, he served as a junior resident in internal medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Dr. Margo concluded his post-graduate training with a two-year fellowship in ophthalmic pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC.

His first faculty appointment was at Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans before moving to Florida, where he meandered for four decades working at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and the Watson Clinic in Lakeland. While at the University of Florida, he was the Dorothy Daniels Professor of Ophthalmic Pathology. In his spare time at the University of South Florida, he studied epidemiology and completed a master’s degree in public health. Dr. Margo currently is director of ophthalmic pathology at USF and teaches at Tulane Medical School, Hospital Corporation of American, and Louisiana State University in Shreveport.

Dr. Margo has been a member of the Cogan Ophthalmic History Society since 2013. He has one grown daughter, Ashley, and is married to Lynn Harman, MD, a frequent collaborator on projects ranging from ophthalmic history and pathology to stained glass murals.

Page last updated: January 3, 2024