Tapas K. Das Gupta, leading UIC cancer surgeon, dies at 92
From his post at the University of Illinois Chicago, Dr. Tapas K. Das Gupta was one of the world's leading authorities in the treatment of sarcomas and melanomas, cancers that invade soft tissue and the skin, respectively.
"For the better part of three decades my dad was sort of the don of surgical oncology in Chicago," said his son, Dr. Neil Das Gupta, a radiation oncologist.
"He got dozens of Christmas gifts from old patients" whose lives he saved, Neil Das Gupta said. "He was in some ways the patron saint of lost causes to a number of patients who'd been told nothing could be done for them before they came to my dad, and a sizable portion survived and, of course, they were eternally grateful."
In the late '60s, Dr. Das Gupta was hired and named head of surgical oncology at UIC. He worked out of UIC Medical Center, now University of Illinois Hospital, where he gained international renown, authored hundreds of papers and mentored dozens of fellows.
"He later received numerous offers from other prestigious academic institutions, but UIC had been the only one to hire, as he put it, 'a small brown doctor from elsewhere,' and he was always loyal to them," his son said.
"He excelled in clinical care, as a teacher and as a researcher — a rare triple threat," said Enrico Benedetti, chair of the hospital's surgical department.
"There once was a 35-year-old patient in Italy who had a tumor between his lungs that was reviewed by doctors in Italy, Germany and Switzerland," Benedetti said. "Nobody could figure out the nature of this tumor. I told Dr. Das Gupta about it and he had a fresh look at the slides ... for maybe two minutes and he identified it and saved the man's life."
Dr. Das Gupta died Dec. 17 from natural causes. He was 92.
His life in west suburban River Forest, where he lived for more than five decades, was a far cry from his upbringing in India.
He was born Feb. 22, 1932, in New Delhi to Nilalohit and Labanya Das Gupta. His father worked for a railway company. His mother was a homemaker.
Dr. Das Gupta attended a school where water had to be sprinkled on the floor to keep the dust down.
He was a gifted student and at 14 went to college, where he was elected student body president.
At 16 he joined a movement seeking to end British occupation and helped organize a factory workers strike that became a large protest movement. British authorities responded with force and opened fire at a rally, hitting Dr. Das Gupta in the leg. He was jailed for 72 hours in solitary confinement before being released, his son said.
His activism didn't derail his studies. He lied about his age to apply to medical school — he was still 16 — and was admitted. When administrators realized the true age of one of their top students, a hiatus was imposed on his studies, during which he found work treating the daily injuries of workers on a tea plantation.
After his medical training, he came to the United States in 1956, working at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago before taking a faculty position at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. When he was denied a promotion due to discrimination, said his son, Dr. Das Gupta, on the advice of colleagues, went to the University of London for a doctorate before returning to the United States to work at UIC.
Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum was a medical resident who studied under Dr. Das Gupta.
"He saved my ass, basically," said Weichselbaum, who found himself in hot water after a physical altercation with another surgical resident who'd made an antisemitic remark.
"I had long hair and a handlebar mustache. I thought I was Hawkeye Pierce [the 'M-A-S-H' TV show character]. The fact that the guy even talked to me was astounding. I thought for sure I was going to get kicked out of med school, and then Tapas made the guy apologize to me," Weichselbaum said.
"I went to work in his lab, and he really set me on a career trajectory that turned out to be great," said Weichselbaum, who is chair of radiation and cellular oncology at the University of Chicago.
"The guy just had a tremendous way about him, and he related to what young people were going through in this country," said Weichselbaum.
Dr. Das Gupta had stopped performing surgery and stepped down as head of surgical oncology, but oversaw research at his lab until he died, his son said.
His passion outside the office, apart from reading medical journals, was family. Eating meals together and watching the Bears with his son were two of his favorite activities.
"Despite having a massive name in medicine he never pushed me at all into medicine, which is somewhat unusual for an Indian physician father, but he never pushed my sister and I in any particular direction," his son said.
In addition to his son, Dr. Das Gupta is survived by his wife, Judy, and his daughter, Joy, as well as five grandchildren.
A memorial service is being planned for the spring or summer.