With a great sadness we announce that Dr. Risa B. Mann, Professor Emeritus of Pathology and Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, passed away on June 26th, 2015 at her home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Dr. Mann was born in 1946 in Washington, D.C. to Fannye Fox Berman and Bernard Abraham Berman, DDS. She attended the Woodrow Wilson High School and Vassar College, where she was a member of the Daisy Chain. She graduated with honors from a combined B.A./M.D. program at the Johns Hopkins University in 1971. Dr. Mann was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.
Dr. Mann continued her career as an intern, pathology resident and chief resident in the Department of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. After residency, she completed a two-year hematopathology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Mann returned to Johns Hopkins in 1977, where she remained as a faculty member of surgical pathology and hematopathology for 27 years. Dr. Ralph Hruban, current chairman of the department and long-term colleague remarked: “Risa was the heart and soul of the Department of Pathology for more than two decades.”
Dr. Mann was an internationally recognized hematopathologist with an interest in lymphoma. She was a member of the National Pathology Panel for Lymphoma Clinical Studies involved in the classification of lymphomas for the National Cancer Institute. Together with Dr. Costan Berard, Dr. Mann published criteria for grading of follicular lymphomas which, with minor modifications, are still used today. Dr. Mann published extensively on the association of Epstein-Barr virus with lymphoproliferative disorders and on the methods to detect EBV in clinical samples. She contributed to major books on pathology and lectured extensively in the national and international venues. Dr. Mann has been a long term member of the Society for Hematopathology and served on the Society Executive Committee. She was also a member of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, Arthur Purdy Stout Society of Surgical Pathologists and International Academy of Pathology.
Dr. Mann was a passionate teacher and mentor to generations of pathology trainees and young pathologists and was recognized by a Faculty Teaching Award. She served as Director of the Pathology Residency Training Program at the Johns Hopkins Hospital for 17 years. Dr. Mann played a role not only in the residents’ education, but she also showed a warm and genuine personal interest in their lives outside of the training program. These relationships frequently continued for many years after the training concluded. In 2002, Dr. Mann delivered the Dean Lecture in which she highlighted the career and contributions of a fellow Johns Hopkins Medical School graduate and pathologist, Dr. Dorothy Reed Mendenhall who described the Reed-Sternberg cell. Dr. Mann’s teaching interests extended outside of Johns Hopkins. She has been a member of the Education Committee of the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology and led many educational offerings of this organization.
Dr. Mann served as a role model to many of the Johns Hopkins trainees. Her professional yet amiable style was well known among colleagues. She was elegant and poised in every situation. She was recognized as one of the Maryland’s Top 100 Women in 1997 and one of the Top Doc’s in Pathology in Baltimore in 2002.
Dr. Mann was married for forty-eight years to Dr. John J. Mann, a faculty member of the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is survived by her husband, their two daughters, Gilda M. Zimmet and Stacie M. Kronthal, and five grandchildren. Dr. Mann is leaving a remarkable legacy as an outstanding hematopathologist, teacher and mentor. Risa will be dearly missed and will live on in our hearts.