IN MEMORIAM
A distinguished member of the headache medicine community, Dr. Ninan Mathew passed away at his home in Houston on July 27. Dr. Mathew was born into a Mar Thoma Syrian Christian family in Kerala, South India. He received his medical degree at Trivandrum Medical College, Kerala, and did post-graduate training in neurology at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. He moved to the US during the summer of 1970 to complete a fellowship in cerebrovascular disease at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
At Baylor, Dr. Mathew was involved in research into measuring cerebral blood flow in migraine patients and thus remained in headache medicine for the remainder of his career. In 1976, he founded the Houston Headache Clinic which was the first headache specialty center in Texas. Later, in 1984, he founded the Dallas Headache Clinic. A few days prior to his death, he was still seeing patients at the Houston Headache Institute.
An acknowledged leader in headache medicine, Dr. Mathew served as President of the American Headache Society( AHS), the International Headache Society, and was chairman and one of the founders of the Headache Section of the American Academy of Neurology. In 1976, he was the recipient of the Harold G. Wolff Award and in 1994, the John R. Graham Distinguished Clinician Award of the AHS. Dr. Mathew received three Lifetime Achievement Awards – Texas Neurological Society( 2012); Headache Cooperative of New England( 2013); and, the American Headache Society( 2014).
His contributions to the medical literature were many and significant. He was the editor of the 1984 text, Cluster Headache, and with Randolph Evans, MD, wrote two editions of Handbook of Headache.
In addition to his professional activities, Dr. Mathew served as president of the India Cultural Center in Houston, and with his wife, was a founding patron of the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts and the Asian Galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Houston.
The National Headache Foundation wishes to express our condolences to his wife, Sushila; his three children – Rita Morico, Sanjay Mathew, MD, and Vijay Mathew; and, his six grandchildren. He will be missed by the headache community and his patients. HW
30 HeadWise ® | Volume 5, Issue 1 • 2015