AAMC Reporter: March 2007

A Glass Act

Jeffrey Rothenberg, M.D.

About eight years ago, an exceedingly difficult stretch at the office led to a turning point for Jeffrey Rothenberg, M.D. After the Indiana University School of Medicine obstetrics and gynecology professor lost three babies in the span of one week, his wife attempted to cheer him up with a novel distraction.

"My wife is an art therapist, and she went out one night, came back, and said, 'I bought you a class in glass blowing.' And I just went with it," Rothenberg recalls.

Today, Rothenberg regularly books studio time at the Indianapolis Art Center, where amid a brick furnace heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit or more, he crafts various art pieces, dishes, ornaments, magnets, paperweights, lampshades, and other items from scratch. He does not sell his glass creations, but gives them out as gifts to friends and coworkers—and capitalizes on their practical applications.

For example, he can make wedding gifts that match the ceremony's theme colors.

"I don't own a glass that I didn't make myself," he adds. "And I make them extra thick so my kids can't break them."

Rothenberg likens the process of learning how to blow glass to the process of becoming a physician.

"There are a lot of parallels," he says.

"No one usually gets hurt in the glass room, but just like in the operating room, glass blowing is a fluid dance, and you have to learn the tricks of the trade from people who are better than you. I feel medicine is more an art than a science, so the two are definitely similar. And in the end, they are both my passions."

—S.H.

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