This fund honors E. L. Jewett and supports a professorship in orthopaedic surgery to benefit research, teaching and patient care in the College of Medicine.

Eugene L. Jewett was an internationally known pioneer in orthopaedic care who invented the Jewett Orthopaedic Hip Nail and the Jewett Hyperextension Back Brace, two prostheses that revolutionized fracture treatment in the 1930s and 1940s.

Gene was the youngest and smallest of four children. He graduated with a chemical engineering degree in 1922 from Cornell University. He immediately landed a job at a chemical plant in Detroit, but after one year of clock-watching, he realized it was not the field for him. He graduated from Harvard Medical School with his medical degree in 1929 and went to intern at Morristown Medical Hospital.

He and his wife Ruth went to Vienna, Austria, where he studied orthopaedics. He interned further at Hartford and did residencies at the New York Post Graduate Medical School and the New York Reconstruction Hospital. After leaving New York, he opened his first office in Orlando on Jan. 1, 1936. During World War II, Navy Captain Jewett served aboard the USS Samaritan as Chief of Orthopaedics and Chief of Surgery. He received numerous honors and awards for his leadership and bravery in the war. Ruth passed away in May 1982 at age 84. Gene passed away on Jan. 23, 1987.