John R. Adler (born 1954) is an American

neurosurgeon Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and peri ...

. He was born in

Yonkers, New York Yonkers () is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. Developed along the Hudson River, it is the third most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City and Buffalo. The population of Yonkers was 211,569 as en ...

, in 1954. He graduated at

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1976 and at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

in 1980. From 1980 to 1987 he did a neurosurgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital and a radiosurgery fellowship at the

Karolinska Institute The Karolinska Institute (KI; sv, Karolinska Institutet; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led Medical school, medical university in Solna Municipality, Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. ...

in Sweden, where he worked with

Lars Leksell Lars Leksell (1907–1986) was a Swedish physician and Professor of Neurosurgery at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He was the inventor of radiosurgery. Life and career Lars Leksell was born in Fässberg Parish, Sweden on Nove ...

. He joined the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine in 1987 as an assistant professor in the department of neurosurgery in 1987, was also, made an assistant professor in radiation oncology in 1992, was made an associate professor in both departments in 1993, and was made a full professor in both departments in 1998. Note, see CV linked at that page. In 2007 he was named the Dorothy and Thye King Chan Professor in neurosurgery. He was eventually appointed an emeritus professor of neurosurgery. In 1985 he did a one-year fellowship in Sweden with

, who had invented a device to deliver targeted radiation at brain tumors, called the

Gamma Knife Radiosurgery is surgery using radiation, that is, the destruction of precisely selected areas of tissue using ionizing radiation rather than excision with a blade. Like other forms of radiation therapy (also called radiotherapy), it is usually u ...

. He was astonished and inspired but saw an opportunity to improve it. The Gamma Knife relied on a physical cage to coordinate the location of the subject's head and the device delivering the radiation; Adler wanted to use medical images to guide the beam, instead of the cage. When he returned to Stanford he worked with faculty in the engineering school to build a prototype and by 1987 was pitching his company to venture capitalists. They rejected his idea because the machines were enormous and expensive (the estimated price at that time was $3.5M), so he raised $800,000 from other neurosurgeons, friends, and family, and started a company, Accuray, in 1990. Adler served as chief medical officer, remaining on the Stanford faculty. The company ran out of money in 1994 and had other struggles; Adler took a leave of absence from Stanford in 1999 and took over as CEO, serving in that role until 2002, when he stepped back into being CMO. As of 2005, the company was selling about two machines each month. In 2009, Adler founded ''Curēus.com'' (originally known as peerEmed.com), a web-based peer-reviewed medical journal that combines attributes of traditional expert review and social networks with the objective of fairly compensating reviewers and authors. In April 2010, Adler was appointed vice president and chief of New Clinical Applications at

Varian Medical Systems Varian Medical Systems is an American radiation oncology treatments and software maker based in Palo Alto, California. Their medical devices include linear accelerators (LINACs) and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions wi ...

. Since 2015 he has served as the founder and CEO of Zap Surgical Systems. The company's flagship project was presented in Europe in 2018 at the "Frontiers of Radiosurgery" scientific symposium and adopted for the first time in Europe in 2020. In 2018 Adler was awarded the Cushing Award for Technical Excellence and Innovation in Neurosurgery, presented at the AANS Annual Scientific Meeting. He is the father of

Trip Adler John R. "Trip" Adler III is an American entrepreneur. He is the CEO and co-founder of Scribd, a digital library and document-sharing platform, which has 80 million users. Background and early career Adler grew up in Palo Alto, California and ...

, co-founder and CEO of

Scribd Scribd Inc. is an American e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its open publishing platform. The company was founded in 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikh ...

. ;Works * *

References

External links

John R. Adler Profile at Stanford University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adler, John R. 1954 births Living people American health care chief executives American inventors American neurosurgeons Harvard College alumni Harvard Medical School alumni People from Yonkers, New York Scientists from New York (state) Stanford University School of Medicine faculty American expatriates in Sweden