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"My philosophy in life has been based on three tenants: family, patient care, and education, and it has been guided by the "Four Hs": hope, honesty, hard work, and humility."

Welcome to my website. Here you can read about my book, Backbone: The Life and Game-Changing Career of a Spinal Neurosurgeon, browse articles I have written on spinal neurosurgery, the role of mentoring in medicine, and other topics, and view photographs and documents related to my immigrant experience and career in neurosurgery. Thank you for sharing my journey with me.

Backbone: The Life and Game-Changing Career of a Spinal Neurosurgeon, explores a life journey that has carried me from my beginnings in a postwar German refugee camp to a long and exciting career in the field of spinal neurosurgery. It is a career that has allowed me the supreme satisfaction of contributing to the development of new techniques and instrumentation for the treatment of spinal disorders. I firmly believe that what supported me through the adversity of my early years and the challenges of my profession, and has allowed me to share so abundantly in the great American Dream, has been my philosophy of the 4 Hs—hope, honesty, hard work and humility. I hope my book inspires all who have wondered, as I have, how they got here from there.

"A great story highlighting the willingness to move ahead . . . not just miraculously going to Harvard or Oxford, but by adaptation and optimization. This is the story."

Michael M. Crow
President, Arizona State University