Born in Toledo, OH in 1927, Julius ‘Jack’ Jacobson’s family moved to New York City in 1935, where he attended the New York City public school system and graduated high school at the young age of 15. While he had the credentials and intellectual ability to attend an Ivy League school, he did not have the finances. As a result, Dr. Jacobson attended The University of Toledo where he worked his way through college as an amateur photographer.i After graduating from his undergraduate studies at the age of 19, Dr. Jacobson served in the US Navy during World War II. After the war, he completed his medical degree at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, graduating in 1952, and began his residency at New York-Presbyterian Medical Center at Columbia University for general surgery training. It was at Columbia that he evolved his interests in vascular surgery, working under the service of Arthur H. Blakemore, MD Jacobson marveled at the experiments searching for a durable treatment for aortic aneurysms, and gravitated toward the investigative process.ii
As Dr. Jacobson started to become involved with microsurgery in the late 1940s, the dissecting microscope was the instrument of choice. Used for surgery on the eye and other small areas, it allowed surgeons to operate on tiny structures. To work on blood vessels, though, the surgeon and an assistant both had to view the surgery simultaneously. Dr. Jacobson needed a two-person surgical microscope to do this, so he built one himself! Known as the “diploscope” Dr. Jacobson worked with Germany’s Carl Zeiss and Zeiss optical engineers to perfect and make the microscope. On the difficulty of developing the microscope, Dr. Jacobson said:
“One of the greatest frustrations was working with American companies and not being able to get the microscope we wanted. Neither American Optical nor Bausch and Lomb felt they could sell enough operating microscopes to make it worthwhile, asking “Can we sell 10,000?” Instead, we went to Carl Zeiss in Germany who were dedicated to research and development.”iii
The resulting collaboration with Zeiss was a surgical tool of such significance that the original now resides at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.
While the diploscope is his most well-known innovation, Dr. Jacobson’s passion for innovation and research also led him to be the first to use a microscope to anastomose tiny blood cells, and pioneered hyperbaric surgery at Mount Sinai, his longtime professional home.iv On a smaller scale, Dr. Jacobson invented other useful medical tools, including the first combined walker and sitting stool to assist patients in rehab, and a simple device to hold a necktie in place so it did not dangle on a patient’s bed during a physical exam.v
