by Lauren D. Holinger, MD

In 1987, through the initiative and generosity of Gabriel F. Tucker, Jr, MD, the Gabriel F. Tucker Award was established under the auspices of the American Laryngological Association to provide an honorarium for a guest speaker at Association meetings on a subject of pediatric laryngology, or to honor an individual of noted achievement in that field.

The Award commemorates two individuals, father and son, who made major contributions not only to pediatric laryngology, but to laryngology and bronchoesophagology in general. Gabriel Frederick Tucker is probably best remembered for the Tucker retrograde esophageal bougie, an instrument that he first presented nationally as his candidate's thesis for the Triological Society in 1924, the same year that Gabriel Junior was born.

Gabriel F. Tucker, Jr, who established the Award, regarded his own discoveries in the Laryngeal Development Laboratory to be his most important contributions to medicine. His identification of the elliptical cricoid cartilage was the first of several discoveries that contributed so much to our understanding of subglottic stenosis.

It is particularly appropriate that the recipient of the 1995 Award is an individual who, with Blair Fearon (the 1989 recipient of the Award), conceived of and developed laryngotracheal reconstruction for the correction of subglottic stenosis. He then introduced the use of costal cartilage and taught the value of the technique.

Dr Robin Cotton undertook his medical schooling at the University of Cambridge in England and graduated from the University of Birmingham. He completed his residency training in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of Toronto. After his pediatric otolaryngology fellowship with Blair Fearon, MD, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto in 1972, he did a head and neck surgery fellowship with Donald Shumrick, MD, in Cincinnati. He is now Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Cincinnati, and Director, Department of Pediatric Otolaryngology and Maxillofacial Surgery, at the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In addition to being a Fellow of the American Laryngological Association, Dr Cotton is a member of many other prestigious national and international medical specialty societies. He has made innumerable original contributions to the medical literature and has edited, authored, and contributed to many of the important textbooks in our field.

In 1986 Dr Cotton organized a pediatric otolaryngology meeting in Cincinnati to honor Gabriel F. Tucker, Jr. Although Gabe was ill (he died later that year), he was able to participate in the ceremonies by telephone. The 1995 Gabriel F. Tucker Award is most appropriately made to the most important contributor to the field of pediatric laryngology in this generation: Robin T. Cotton, MD.