Carl A. Berntsen, MD Papers

Carl Berntsen was born November 7, 1919 in Los Angeles, California to Carl A. Berntsen and Bonnie Standard. He attended Aptos Junior High School in San Francisco from 1932 to 1934 and Lowell High School, also in San Francisco, from 1934 to 1937. Dr. Berntsen attended the University of California, Berkeley from 1938 to 1942 and began medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland the same year. Following his medical school graduation in 1945, Dr. Berntsen began an internship in the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, remaining there from 1945 through 1946.

Early in his medical career, Dr. Berntsen joined the United States Navy. From 1942 to 1945 he held the rank of ensign. In 1945, Dr. Berntsen earned a promotion to Assistant Surgeon with the Rank of Lieutenant, junior grade and by 1973 was promoted to Lieutenant Commander of the Medical Corps of the United States Naval Reserve. During those years, from 1946 to 1948, Dr. Berntsen worked at several military hospitals including the Veterans Administration Hospital, Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, and Long Beach Naval Hospital, all in California, and served as a Battalion Surgeon in China, Guam, and at Camp Pendleton, California. In November 1979, having served the United States Navy abroad and at home for over thirty years, Dr. Berntsen was officially transferred to the Naval Reserve Retired List.

In 1948, Dr. Berntsen returned to the East Coast where he worked as an intern and fellow in the Department of Pathology at what was then New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center (now NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center). He remained at Cornell for the rest of his professional life, serving in the Departments of Pathology, Medicine, and Public Health. Dr. Berntsen rose from intern to assistant resident, research fellow, instructor, assistant and associate professor. When he retired, Dr. Berntsen was bestowed the honorary title of Professor Emeritus.

Dr. Berntsen also held appointments at several other hospitals in New York City. He joined the staff of the Hospital for Special Surgery in 1954 as a fellow in their Department of Rheumatology and remained on staff as an attending physician, a representative on their Medical Board, the chief of the Rheumatic Disease Clinic, and a member of their Utilization Review Committee. Dr. Berntsen was also affiliated with Bellevue Hospital, serving as a visiting physician and as the Director of their Subdivision of Infectious Disease. He maintained ties to the United States military as an attending physician in the Department of Medicine and a consultant in Rheumatic Disease at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx.

With a career that spanned more than forty years in medicine, Dr. Berntsen earned a number of professional awards, participated in numerous professional societies and activities, and prepared dozens of medical articles, book chapters, and conference presentations for both the lay and scholarly public.

Aside from his interest in medicine, Dr. Berntsen was a dedicated historian. He served as the Historian of the Society of Alumni of Bellevue Hospital and as a member of the Century Association in New York City. Dr. Berntsen helped reveal the history of medical education and practice in New York City through extensive research and the compilation of a vast bibliography of sources. In doing so, he also contributed to the existing literature on the history of Cornell University Medical College (CUMC) as it approached its centennial in 1998. He wrote several chapters of a book on the history of CUMC, but did not have an opportunity to finish the project.

Dr. Berntsen married Anne Proctor Rice in Hamilton, Massachusetts in 1948 and together raised four children. At the time of his death in 1997, Berntsen was a grandfather to four.

Berntsen died September 9, 1997 two months shy of his 78th birthday.