In Memoriam: Michael B. Mayor

Michael B. Mayor, an orthopaedic surgeon and adjunct professor of engineering, cofounded the Dartmouth Biomedical Engineering Center for Orthopaedics.

Orthopaedic surgeon and adjunct professor of engineering Michael B. Mayor died at Kendal at Hanover on March 31. He was raised on a farm in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., and attended Deerfield Academy, where an X-ray revealed a tumor on his femur, requiring an above-the-knee amputation.

He went on to earn his bachelor’s in electrical engineering in 1959 and his M.D. in 1965 at Yale. Mayor began his surgical training at the University Hospitals of Cleveland, where he assisted in and then taught the first U.S. hip joint replacements. A National Institutes of Health fellowship in bioengineering solidified his interest in research.

As a surgeon at what is now Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center for more than 40 years, Mayor replaced an estimated 3,000 hips and 4,000 knees. Mayor joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School and cofounded the Dartmouth Biomedical Engineering Center (DBEC) with Professor John P. Collier ’72 Th’75 Th’77. They collaborated to develop a new porous coating for orthopaedic implants and implement DBEC’s program for retrieval analysis to study these devices and provide direct feedback to the manufacturers and surgeons.

"The implant retrieval lab was what permitted us to have all our breakthroughs, and that was 100-percent Michael’s idea,” says Collier. “He was the magnet. Devices came to him. The mail was full of them and he would analyze every single one. It provided a pedestal for perspective that allowed us to understand implant failure in a way that no one else could."

With more than 20,000 retrievals, DBEC remains one of the largest such labs in the world, responsible for critical advances and profound quality-of-life improvements for millions of patients worldwide. He is survived by his wife, Lili; children Rowland, Anna, Sloane, and Catha; and 10 grandchildren.