Emeritus professor dies at 80, founded Wharton M.B.A. plan

Dr. Samuel Preston Martin, a University emeritus professor of medicine and health-care systems, died on May 2 at his daughter's home in Gainesville, Fla. According to his family, the cause of death was lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes. Martin was 80 years old. Martin joined the University's faculty in 1970, serving in various positions for 25 years. During this time he directed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and started and taught for 20 years the M.B.A. curriculum on health-care management in Wharton, which has since graduated more than 130 doctors. Martin also founded the Ware College House and served as Faculty Master of the special residential program for a number of years. During his time at the University, he also held the position of executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and directed the graduate program in health care management from 1974-1979. Public Health and Preventive Medicine Professor William Kissick met Martin in 1963 at a Washington D.C. convention, and remained in close contact with him in the years following. "He was extraordinary -- a man of many parts," Kissick said. "He had remarkable energy. He was very bright, very focused, very accomplished, very efficient." And Associate Director of the Wharton Health Care System June Kinney said Martin had "a sort of magical impact on people." "[Martin] was a physician who was very much ahead of his time in the sense that he really was the first to sort of make connections between medical school and health care management," she said. "I think his biggest role was really being a mentor to all of these physicians who wanted to become leaders in healthcare." The son of a doctor, Martin received his doctorate of medicine from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Prior to moving to Philadelphia, where he resided until his death, Martin was affiliated with the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. and the School of Medicine at the University of Florida in Gainesville. In addition to his daughter, Dr. Celia Martin, he is also survived by his two sons, Dr. Samuel P. Martin 4th and Dr. William B. Martin, and five grandchildren. Martin's wife, Dorothy Everett Martin, died in February of this year. His ex-wife, Dr. Ruth Campbell Martin, survives, as well.

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