In 1997, during the Iowa Eye Association Meeting, we celebrated the many accomplishments of Dr. H. Stanley "Stan" Thompson. Dr. Thompson retired at the end of June after a 30-year career teaching neuro-ophthalmology, seeing patients and doing pupillary research.

Born in China to Irish missionary parents, Dr. Thompson spent World War II in a Japanese concentration camp in north China. He returned home to Belfast, Ireland, after the war and immigrated to the U.S. in 1949. He earned a BA in geography and anthropology at the University of Minnesota, and met and married his wife, Delores, during that time. After becoming a U.S. citizen and spending two years in the U.S. army as a photographer, he returned to medical school at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Thompson was drawn to Iowa by the reputation of the ophthalmology department. He came here in 1961 as an intern hoping to get an inside track on an ophthalmology residency. It apparently worked; Dr. Braley took him on as a resident in 1962. He also studied with Drs. Lowenstein and Loewenfeld at Columbia in New York.

In 1963, the UI Departments of Ophthalmology and Neurology purchased a Lowenstein-Loewenfeld electronic pupillograph machine for Dr. Thompson's lab, and he was soon publishing papers about the "afferent pupil defect." After his residency, he spent a year (1966-67) with Dr. W.F. Hoyt in San Francisco on an NIH special fellowship grant studying neuro-ophthalmology. He returned to the UI in 1967, joining Dr. Blodi's faculty as an assistant professor and was promoted to professor in 1976. His research interests have centered on the autonomic nervous system and the clinical evaluation of optic nerve function, and his publications are numerous. Over the years, Dr. Thompson has directed the Neuro-Ophthalmology Service and has been involved in training 40 fellows in neuro-ophthalmology, many of whom now hold full-time academic positions. He belongs to numerous professional organizations, has hosted several congresses, served on the Board of the North American Neuro-ophthalmology Society and as co-president of the International Neuro-Ophthalmology Society in 1988, served on the Residency Review Committee for Ophthalmology from 1989 to 1995, and was chairman of the American Board of Ophthalmology in 1996.

In a recent interview, Dr. Thompson commented that P.J. Leinfelder had been a model for how to retire gracefully, and he hoped to do it as well as P.J. had done it. Dr. Thompson plans to return to the department informally approximately two days per week as professor emeritus and will continue to attend neuro-ophthalmology professional meetings. He is working on a number of academic projects including writing about ophthalmic history and working on pupillary research with Dr. Randy Kardon. However, his most ambitious plan is to open an antiquarian book shop with his wife, Delores. They have already built an addition onto their house outside Iowa City and have filled it with books! They welcome browsers who call ahead. Their email address is:

(Ginniff was the name of his paternal grandmother's family, and most families with that name can trace their ancestry back to County Down). The Thompsons are also preparing a web page (www.ginniff.com) and will put out catalogs in their areas of bookish interest: history of medicine, science and technology, modern children's picture books, books about books and printing, horticulture, literature and detective fiction.

Dr. Thompson's quiet, warm manner, his humor, and his expertise in neuro-ophthalmology will be greatly missed by all in the department, but we look forward to seeing him frequently and perhaps exploring his bookstore.