Dr. Arthur J. Moss, professor emeritus at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who devoted five decades to the health of the young, died July 14. He was 90.
Moss was an internationally recognized authority in the field of pediatric hypertension and made many impressive contributions to the field of pediatric cardiology, among them his findings on cardiovascular changes in newborns. He also studied pulmonary artery pressure in newborns and the cardiopulmonary status of cystic fibrosis patients. His book, “Heart Disease in Infants, Children and Adolescents,� has become the standard text in pediatric cardiology.
“He was a true pioneer and one of the founders of our field,� said Dr. Thomas Klitzner, chief of pediatric cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA.
Born in St. Paul, Minn., in 1914, Moss attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he earned his medical degree in 1938. He performed his internship at Minneapolis General Hospital from 1937 through 1939 and completed a pediatric fellowship at the University of Minnesota between 1939 and 1942. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1942 through 1946, where he rose to the rank of major.
He came to California in 1946, and started a private practice in pediatric medicine in Inglewood, which he continued through 1960. He was chairman of the pediatrics department at Los Angeles Harbor General Hospital, now known as Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, in Torrance, Calif., from 1948 through 1951. He also served as head of the department of pediatrics at Methodist Hospital in Los Angeles in 1951.
“Dr. Moss will be remembered as the consummate teacher who remained active in educating our pediatric residents until very recently,� said Edward McCabe, physician-in-chief of the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA. “He was an outstanding leader who recruited young faculty to UCLA and nurtured their careers so they could become nationally recognized experts in the care of children.�
Moss joined UCLA Medical School in 1952 as an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics. His other positions at the medical school included executive chairman of the department of pediatrics from 1967 through 1977 and chief of the pediatric cardiology division from 1977 until his retirement in 1981.
He won many awards, including the Los Angeles County Heart Association Award of Merit for three consecutive years (1964–66), the Susan and Theodore Cummings Humanitarian Award (1967), the Leadership Award from the National Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation and the Outstanding Service Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics (both in 1973), the Outstanding Service Award from the American Journal of Cardiology (1978), the UCLA Pediatric Housestaff Teaching Award (1971–72 and 1977–78), and the Ventura County Medical Center Teaching Award (1992).
He also is cited in Who’s Who in America and is the namesake of the annual Arthur J. Moss Lectureship in the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA.
Moss was a major contributor to the activities of many professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Heart Association, the American Pediatric Society, the California Heart Association, the California Medical Association, the California Society of Pediatric Cardiology, the Los Angeles County Heart Association, the National Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the Western Association of Physicians, and UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute, which pioneered the field of pediatric ophthalmology.
Moss was the loving husband of the late Alice Moss and is survived by his children, Stephanie, Tom and Patsy, and his grandchildren, Jessica, Hart, Alice, Lindsey and Rachel.
The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to support the Arthur Moss Endowment Fund through a gift to The UCLA Foundation, c/o Medical Sciences Development, 10945 Le Conte Ave., Suite 3132, Los Angeles, Calif. 90095.