Interview with Virginia Kanick, MD by Norma M.T. Braun, MD

Virginia Helen Kanick was born in Coaldale, PA, and moved with her family to Richmond, VA as a child. She relocated to NYC to attend Barnard College where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1947. She studied medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. After medical school, she interned at Case Western Reserve and became a resident in radiology from 1952-55, at St. Luke's Hospital. Over her career at St. Luke's, she became an attending radiologist, the Deputy Director and Director of Radiology, the President of the Medical Board of St. Luke's - Roosevelt Hospital, and Clinical Professor of Radiology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Along the way, she published dozens of peer reviewed articles in medical journals, became a fellow of numerous medical societies, served on the Advisory Committee for Medical Devices at the Food and Drug Administration, and became a Director of the New York State Radiology Society and the New York County Medical Society.

Dr. Norma Braun (neé Wang Mai Tsen) was born in Shanghai, China during the third Japanese invasion, before the World War II. Prior to the war her family was well off and very well educated. Both her grandfather and father spent time in American universities. Norma, however did not attend school until age 10, because of the war. In 1949, she, her mother and siblings relocated to Philadelphia. Norma, who desired to be a doctor from a young age, started medical school at Temple University but transferred to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (Class of 1963) after being offered a scholarship. She completed her internship and residency at Bellevue Hospital and began working at St. Luke’s Hospital in 1982, as a cardio-pulmonary fellow under A. Loomis Bell, MD, who ran the cardiopulmonary laboratory. Eventually she narrowed her specialty to pulmonary medicine, and continues to work in that area at St. Luke’s, now Mount Sinai Morningside.