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Portrait unveiled at Storm Eye Institute

A portrait of David Apple, M.D., was unveiled May 30 in ceremonies at the Albert Florens Storm Eye Institute. Apple was honored for his service to the institute and his contribution to the field of ophthalmology.

Apple is professor of ophthalmology and pathology and holds the Pawek-Vallotton Chair of Biomedical Engineering. He is director of the Center for Research on Ocular Therapeutics and Biodevices.
 
Apple was chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology and director of the Storm Eye Institute from 1988 to 1996 and successfully led the effort to raise $8.8 million to complete a four-floor expansion and general renovation of the Eye Institute. During this period, he also raised several million dollars to establish additional research areas in the institute, including the N. Edgar Miles Center and the Magill Laser Center. Following successful completion of the building campaign and wishing to return to full-time research and academic pursuits, he resigned from the chairmanship.
 
A native of Illinois, Apple did his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He attended the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, where he graduated in 1966. He served his internship and subsequent residency in pathology at Louisiana State University and Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and in 1970 completed a post-residency NIH-sponsored fellowship in Ocular Pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.
 
He was assistant and subsequently associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary and Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine in Chicago from 1971 to 1975. He then completed his residency in Clinical Ophthalmology at the University of Iowa in 1979.
 
Apple spent two years on research sabbaticals in Germany under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn-Bad Godesberg. In 1975 he completed a one-year tenure at the University of Tuebingen. In 1979 he was named Distinguished Senior American Professor, received a Humboldt Prize and spent six months at the Institute for Experimental Eye Research in Bonn and six months in research at the University Eye Clinic in Munich. He co-authored, with Professor G.O. H. Naumann, the definitive German language ocular pathology textbook of Pathology of the Eye. This appeared in 1980. Apple translated this text to English in 1986. The second German edition was published in 1997 and Apple's English translation is scheduled to appear this year.
 
He was professor of ophthalmology at Tulane University, New Orleans in 1980, completing one year of clinical practice. He was then appointed professor of ophthalmology and pathology at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City. He served there from 1981-1988, where he co-founded and developed the Center for Intraocular Lens Research. The center, which has received international acclaim for its studies related to cataract surgery, was transferred from Salt Lake City to Charleston in 1988.