Duke Samson was born in January 1943 in Odessa, Texas. Following graduation from Odessa High School in 1961, he attended Stanford University, where he majored in psychology and played intercollegiate football and rugby. He graduated from Washington University Medical School in 1969 and completed a surgical internship at Duke University Medical Center. His neurosurgical residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School was highlighted by a fellowship with Professor Gerard Guiot in Paris and Professor M.G. Yasargil in Zurich. Dr. Samson entered the United States Army Medical Corps in 1975, serving both at Clark Air Force Base in the Republic of the Philippines and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In 1977 he joined the faculty at Southwestern, focusing his clinical and investigative interests on vascular diseases of the nervous system. Dr. Samson was promoted to Professor of Surgery in 1984 and assumed the chairmanship of the Division of Neurological Surgery the following year. In 1988, neurosurgery at Southwestern achieved departmental status and he accepted the W. Kemp Clark Chair, established in honor of the division’s first chairman. On sabbatical leave from the chairmanship in 1998, Dr. Samson was named Director of the Mobility Foundation, a multi-disiplinary center dedicated to clinical research in cerebrovascular disease and spinal cord injury. He currently holds the Lois C.A. and Darwin E. Smith Distinguished Chair in Neurological Surgery. Dr. Samson is married to Dr. Patricia Bergen, a member of the General Surgery faculty at Southwestern, and they have two children, Loren Daniel Bergen Samson and Gabriel Stanford Bergen Samson.
