Jack H. Petajan, MD, PhD
AANEM 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

Dr. Petajan was born on April 2, 1930 in Evanston, IL. He received his BA at John Hopkins University in 1953 followed by his MD and PhD at the University of Wisconsin in 1959. From 1960 to 1963 Dr. Petajan was a resident in neurology at the University of Wisconsin. In 1962 he performed a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester followed by a National Institutes of Health exchange fellowship at the Brain Research Institute at the University of Zurich from 1962-1963. In 1966 Dr. Petajan was certified in neurology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Petajan started his career as Assistant Professor of Neurology and Physiology at the University of Wisconsin and has since served at the Arctic Health Research Lab in Alaska and the University of Utah. Currently, he is a professor of neurology at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Dr. Petajan has been a valued member of the AANEM since 1967. He was a Board member from 1973 to 1978, and President of the AANEM from 1976 to 1977. He has served on numerous AANEM committees and was instrumental in starting the AANEM monograph series. He also has been an examiner and supervisor for many years for the ABEM exam, as well as a member of the ABEM Board of Directors and ABEM Vice-chair.

Dr. Petajan’s research has focused on motor unit firing rates and recruitment properties; use of surface recorded EMG for the diagnosis of neuromuscular disease and studies of motor fatigue in disorders such as multiple sclerosis. He has authored the chapters “Tremor” in Clinical Electromyography by Brown and Bolton, and “The Management of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: Terminal Stages” in Realities In Coping With Progressive Neuromuscular Diseases by Charash, Lovelace, Wolf, Kutscher, Roye, and Leach. Dr. Petajan has also authored/co-authored over 50 publications on electrodiagnostic medicine.

He has held numerous consulting positions on national advisory boards and received many honors for his contributions to the field of neuromuscular disease. Dr. Petajan has long given service to the both the AANEM and the field of clinical neurophysiology.