EyeWorld is the official news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.
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December 2013 said, 'What about your modern lenses, what are you doing with them?'" Mr. Munro said, recalling that he replied, "We test them inhouse." Dr. Apple replied: "Who is going to believe that?" Thus began a great partnership in ophthalmology that favorably impacted a leading IOL company's designs—not to say that Dr. Apple always got it right. "He suggested, to our surprise, that our Centerflex (later renamed C-flex) should be vaulted posteriorly—angulated to push up against the posterior capsule," Mr. Munro said. Despite testing his theory, "We found to David's surprise and my great relief that there was no difference in PCO reduction." Meanwhile, Mr. Munro said, "David's reaction was very interesting; he was impressed. Here an experiment proved his own dogma wrong. He would then in modified presentations show how angulation is important, with one exception [citing the collaborative research]. There was a mutual admiration. I recognized him as a great scientific mind." It has been said that even when human greatness is among human greatness, one is still greater than the other. This was true when Admiral Chester Nimitz walked beside General Douglas MacArthur, with the body language of the former showing obvious deference at times to the latter. It applies to the Apple, Auffarth, and Munro trio as well. "Even when I was a professor, he had me carry his bag when we met in meetings, going to the next lecture, like I used to do 20 years before as his fellow," Dr. Auffarth said. "We did this because he was sick. Nevertheless it was funny. 'Can you carry this?' he would say. I was running [after it]." Mr. Munro recalled: "If I were to send him an email, if we happened to meet afterward, he would have printed it and red-lined it. I always expected a mark on the final line." But in this case, the hierarchy also was a family-like one, such that it created fondness for a benevolent leader of the field. "If Gerd Auffarth here will describe David Apple as his scientific father, to me he was like an uncle," Mr. Munro said. Undoubtedly, Dr. Apple's "son" and "nephew" are carrying on his work and legacy in Heidelberg to benefit the global ophthalmic industry for years to come. EW Editors' note: Dr. Auffarth is head of the laboratory and Mr. Munro is business development director at the David J Apple Laboratory. EW International Contact information Auffarth: gerd.auffarth@med.uni-heidelberg.de Munro: donald.munro@djapplelab.com 47