Arnold Belker, M.D. died on August 26, 2023. His record of service to both patients and colleagues is inspirational.
Dr. Belker was a highly respected leader in our discipline who was a regular attendee and contributor to ASA meetings. He served as President of the American Society of Andrology 1996- 1997, and also received the Distinguished Service Award in 2003.
Dr. Belker was among the first Urologists in the country to perform microsurgical procedures and taught these skills to many urologists by organizing and/or delivering many microsurgical courses. Arnold published a highly-cited, landmark article concerning the results of 1,469 microsurgical vasectomy reversals in a collaborative study that he organized with urologists at the Universities of California at San Francisco, Michigan, Oregon and the Cleveland Clinic. He served on three different American Urological Association (AUA) Guideline committees, and he was the 2016 recipient of the AUA Presidential Citation Award. He is listed in the AUA’s esteemed Didusch Museum of Urologic History for his accomplishments in microsurgery and male infertility.
In addition to service to the ASA and AUA, Arnold was President of the Society of Reproductive Surgeons, which honored him as the recipient of its Distinguished Reproductive Surgeon Award “in recognition of his many contributions as a reproductive surgeon, and for his role as the ‘ongoing conscience’ of science in the field of male reproductive surgery”. Recognizing the important role of the reproductive Urologist in the care of the infertile couple, as well as the need for those working in the field of Urology to have a voice on the Board of Directors, he played the key leadership role, together with Drs. Marc Goldstein and Dolores Lamb, in creating the Society for the Study of Male Reproduction and Urology (SMRU) as a formal affiliated society of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (American Fertility Society). The SMRU presented him with the Distinguished Reproductive Urologist Award “for significant contributions to the field of reproductive urology and for service to the organization”.
He and his wife, Terry, traveled all over the world where he served as an invited speaker in numerous countries. He is also survived by his son, daughter, and three beloved grandchildren.