Shizuo Oi: the 2002–2003 ISPN president

Excerpt

Shizuo Oi was born on 12 June 1947 in Toyooka, Hyogo, Japan, in a Christian family of doctors. His father, Yoshio Oi (1911–1982) was an ear/nose/throat (ENT) doctor, and his aunt, Toshiko Oi (1899–1951), was one of the first female doctors in Japan to graduate from Tokyo Women’s Medical University School of Medicine. His two elder brothers, father-in-law, brother-in-law and grandfather-in-law are all doctors. He decided his specialty was to be neurosurgery because of the influence of his eldest brother, Yoshiyuki Oi, also a neurosurgeon, who obtained a doctorate with a series on hydrocephalus research in the 1960s. In these familial circumstances, as a child, his first goal was to become a doctor of medicine. However, before premedical school age, he excelled most at sport baseball, volleyball, swimming, skiing, golf, track events (short and long-distance running), etc., and also at photography. He was the only gold prize winner for the Hyogo Prefecture athletic competition in his high school out of 550 pupils. His performance recorded at that time was 11.8 s in 100-m track running, 80 m in ball throwing, 85 cm in the high jump, 70 kg in a hand grip power (right = left), etc. …