If a single term could capture the essence of the career of A. Bernard Ackerman, it is originality. His distinctive form of pedagogy has revolutionized thinking, not only in dermatopathology, but also in clinical dermatology and general pathology. For more than three decades, that unique mode of teaching has been delivered at a multiheaded microscope to which thousands of eager students from all parts of the world have flocked.

Dr. Ackerman prepared for Princeton University (where he majored in religion and literature) at Phillips Academy, Andover. After Princeton, he graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, did his residency training in dermatology at Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University, and completed a fellowship in dermatopathology at Harvard. Between 1969 and 1973, he was Director of Dermatopathology at the University of Miami School of Medicine, from 1973 to 1993, Director of Dermatopathology at New York University School of Medicine, and from 1993 to 1999, Director of the Institute for Dermatopathology at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. In 1999 he returned to New York City to create the Ackerman Academy of Dermatopathology, a center devoted to diagnosis, teaching, and advancing the perimeter of knowledge of diseases of the skin.