Post by Admin on Sept 4, 2021 14:20:34 GMT -4
Rudolph Fisher | Physician | 1897-1934
Fisher was an African-American physician, radiologist, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, musician, and orator. In addition to publishing scientific articles, he had a love of music. He played piano, wrote musical scores and toured with Paul Robeson, playing jazz. He wrote multiple short stories, two novels and contributed his articles to the NAACP all before his death at the age of 37.
Medical career
Fisher was successful in both the English and medical field. During the 1920s, he published his research on the effect of ultraviolet rays on viruses in medical journals. He was a head researcher at Manhattan's International Hospital. During this time, he continued to write his novels, poetry, and articles, mainly about experiences throughout his life. His experience in the medical field helped him to get ideas for his writing on mystery, and it helped him to create illustrations of the human body. Fisher completed an internship at Freedman's Hospital in one year during 1925. In 1926, he and his wife moved to New York. Fisher then joined a prestigious board called the Fellow at the National Research Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Fisher soon after became superintendent of the International Hospital in Harlem in 1927, and set up his private practice as a radiologist, with an X-ray laboratory of his own, in New York.
Fisher died in 1934 at the age of 37 from abdominal cancer likely caused by his own x-ray experimentation. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City. He left behind his wife formerly known as Jane Ryder and son Hugh Ryder Fisher. He also left behind an unfinished manuscript for “The Conjure Man Dies”, as he planned to develop the novel into a play. With the help of Fisher's close colleagues, the play graced the stage of the Federal Theater Project in Harlem in 1936.
