The Sunday March 16 'San Francisco Chronicle' has an extraordinary story about UCSF professor Dr. Ephraim P. Engleman, Director of the Rosalind Russell/Ephraim P. Engleman Rheumatology Research Center at UCSF. UCSF Dept of Medicine | Faculty Profiles This coming Monday will be Engleman's birthday and he won't be at work. But Tuesday, he expects to drive up to work in SF from his home in San Mateo as he always does. What's so interesting about this? On Monday, Engleman will be 103 years old. And damn it, he's still working, in fact he just published a book. He still sees patients. Asked if he's ever going to retire, he replied, "I hope not. I have no intention of retiring. I'm going to stick around as long as the university will have me and as long as I have it upstairs (pointing to his head). He's been a professor at UCSF since 1947. Over the years he's gradually gotten nicer and nicer offices, and now has one with a view of everything. His private life has just as much longevity as his professional one. He's been married to his wife Jean for 72 years. She a comparatively youthful 98. Asked when he was last carded, he said that a cop pulled him over for blowing a stop sign a few months ago. The cop asked him for his drivers licence. He handed it over, the cop looked at it, said "Oh my God!!", handed it back and told Engleman to forget the ticket that the cop was going to write him. He graduated from San Jose High School (there are countless high schools in San Jose now) and attended a reunion six or seven months ago. He was the only graduate of the class of 1927 who showed up. After graduating from high school, he worked for a while as a musician accompanying silent films at the Fox California Theatre. Then he went to Stanford, graduating in 1933, and on to medical school at Columbia. He's still into music and is currently writing an article on a 19th century violinist for a musician's magazine. Asked for longevity tips, he said the first thing is to select parents with the right genes. Asked for another tip, he said, "Keep breathing. This is absolutely critical to longevity." I don't know what the record is for the world's oldest university professor, but this guy has to be a contender.
Dr. Ray Crist, a professor of chemistry at Messiah College (in Pennsylvania) retired from teaching in 2004 at the age of 104. At the time, he was thought to be not only the oldest professor in the US, but the oldest full-time employed worker of any kind. He passed away the next year, at the age of 105.
