In memoriam Professor Paul Rutgeerts

It is with great sadness that we learned about the unexpected

passing of em. Prof. Dr. Paul Rutgeerts on 12

September 2020.

Paul Rutgeers (°1948, Brussels) obtained a Doctorate in Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics from KU Leuven in 1973 and further specialized in internal medicine at UZ Leuven.

In 1981 he was promoted to an aggregate for higher education with a thesis on ‘Bile acid disorders in Crohn’s disease’. He became a lecturer at KU Leuven in 1981 and professor in 1990. He was admitted to the retirement in 2013.  His main research areas have been the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease and the clinical genetics, immunology and endoscopy of IBD.

Prof. Dr. Rutgeerts was a gastroenterology staff member at UZ Leuven in the Department of Internal Medicine in 1978 and head of the Endoscopy Department. He was chairman of the clinical IBD unit, the IBD clinical trials group and the IBD research group. He was a member of the executive committee of UZ Leuven. Professor Rutgeerts has been active in many domestic and foreign scientific organizations, including as co-founder of the Belgian IBD Research Group (BIRD) and in the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG).

He was advisor of the European Working Party on Epidemiology and Pathogenesis of IBD and of the Executive Committee of the International Organization for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IOIBD). He is Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (FRCP) and American Gastroenterological Association Fellow (AGAF).

His scientific work was awarded several prizes, including the international Herbert Falk Foundation Award in 2010 and the Maisin Excellence Prize of the Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) in 2010. In addition to his clinical and scientific activities, he also helped to train students and physician assistants.  He was responsible for the internship year in the Faculty of Medicine for many years as an internship dean. Many have had the privilege of being a patient of Prof. Rutgeerts as your doctor.

We will all remember him permanently as an exceptional, spirited doctor who did everything for his patients.  His drive for scientific developments in inflammatory bowel diseases, his talent to share his knowledge with others, his great commitment to patients, together with his stylish handling of colleagues and employees will stay with us.

Prof Dr. S. Vermeire, Prof Dr. M. Ferrante, Prof dr. J. Sabino en dr. B. Verstockt