Richard M Heller, MD, Professor Emeritus of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, founder of Pediatric Radiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family on the evening of Monday, February 3, at the age of 86.
Dr. Heller graduated from Carleton College in 1959 and obtained his medical degree from Northwestern Medical School in 1963. He subsequently joined the United States Air Force and became Captain of the Outpatient Department at the USAF Hospital in Izmir, Turkey.
Upon his return to the states in 1966, Dr. Heller began his residency in Radiology at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital and concluded with a fellowship in Pediatric Radiology at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital. In 1970, Dr. Heller joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins as an Assistant Professor in Radiology and Pediatrics.
In 1975, Dr. Heller came to Vanderbilt and initiated pediatric radiology at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, serving as its leader through 2004. Dr. Heller also assumed the leadership of the Radiology Residency Program for over 20 years and established the Fellowship in Pediatric Radiology.
Dr. Heller has written six books and more than 100 scientific articles. Pediatricians and house officers showed their appreciation for his teaching and his contributions to patient care by awarding him the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Department of Pediatrics in 1999.
In 2009, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital named the Heller Education Center Classroom in his honor, a project funded by 125 young physicians recruited and trained by Dr. Heller during his tenure as head of the Radiology Residency program.
Dr. Heller was also a high achiever in other areas of life beyond Medicine, and he was often called a “renaissance man.” In 1981, Dr. Heller was named Honorary Danish Consul for Tennessee. His love affair with Denmark and the excellence of his work as Consul led Queen Margrethe of Denmark to name him Knight Chevalier Class Royal Order of Dannebrog, subsequently elevated to Knight First Class in 1999.
Dr. Heller also had close relationships in London, England. He served as consultant Pediatric Radiologist at Sick Children’s Hospital, London, where he made lifelong friendships, and became a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and Consultant to the International Pediatric Association of the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
Crossing continents, he became Consultant to the Minister of Health for Bahrain and Kuwait, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Radiology Outreach Foundation. Dr Heller was also a member of the National Zoological Park Advisory Board and Consultant at the Nashville Zoo.
In 2010 Dr. Heller funded a lectureship in Pediatric Radiology and in Pediatrics, the Toni and Richard M Heller Lecture, which fosters Dr. Heller’s enduring wish to continue to educate others in the specialty of pediatric radiology for years to come.
Dr. Heller retired in 2014, but his many contributions are indelibly engraved in the honor rolls of Vanderbilt, of pediatric radiology and as a citizen of the world.
He is survived by the love of his life, his wife Toni, a graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity school, and by his daughter Jamie, an attorney in Nashville, and his son Dr Richard E Heller, a pediatric radiologist in Chicago, as well as his four grandchildren, Richard IV, Julian, Mark and Bobbie.