“Be simple in concept, terse in expression, and logical in progress from one idea to the next” (1). Your incoming President's self-revealing words illuminate some of the outstanding characteristics of this distinguished clinician, teacher, and medical statesman. Robert Phelps Barden was born in New York in 1906, there attended the Horace Mann School for Boys, and was graduated from Princeton in 1929. While junior at Princeton, Bob's father died, and his mother, with a fine musical back-ground from Oberlin, entered the public school system of New York City at the age of fifty. While helping Bob to continue his education, along with Bob's brother and sister, Mrs. Barden became Director of the Music Department at Erasmus Hall High School, a significant achievement. Bob returned to New York to take his degree in medicine at Columbia University in 1933. Presented with opportunities for graduate study in Michigan, Boston, and Philadelphia, he chose the latter because of its reputation and proximity to home. Dr....