Collection: Iser Steiman papers | Archives at Yale (original) (raw)

Iser Steiman emigrated from Latvia to Canada at the age of 14 and received his M.D. from the University of Manitoba in 1924. He became a pioneer rural family doctor in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, where he built his own hospital, the King Edward Hospital. In World War II, he joined the Royal Canadian Airforce. Because of his growing interest in aviation medicine and his discovery of a recent textbook in Russian, his superiors requested him to translate it. In the process of preparing the translation, he was introduced to John F. Fulton, Sterling professor of physiology at Yale School of Medicine. Steiman's translation, The Fundamentals of Aviation Medicine, was published in Torono in 1943. In 1944, on Fulton's initiative, Steiman was posted to work with the aeromedical research unit at Yale. After the war, Steiman moved to Vancouver where he practiced medicine, translated other medical works from Russian, and wrote on the history of medicine.