Clinical Anatomy 18:224225 (2005)

OBITUARY

In Remembrance: Hanno Boon, PhD (19702004)

JAN H. MEIRING*
Department of Anatomy, School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Hanno Boon, a talented and valued colleague,

passed away, so tragically and untimely, on 13
December 2004. Hanno was born in Kempton Park
in South Africa, on 8 June 1970. In 1994 he graduated as medical doctor from the University of Pretoria. After his internship, he completed a degree in
1998 in Family Medicine, MMed (Fam Med), at the
same University, while working in the Emergency
Rooms of both Pretoria Academic Hospital and
Mamelodi Hospital. He joined the Department of
Anatomy at the University of Pretoria as lecturer in
1997 and established a research eld in clinical anatomy, focusing on the underlying anatomy of several
invasive procedures and modern imaging techniques,
as well as on the clinical anatomical competency of
general medical practitioners. During this time he
was also a part-time consultant at the Mamelodi
Hospital, until the middle of 2004 when he went
into part-time private practice. In 2001 he became
Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy
and was promoted to full Professor at the end of
2004. He obtained his PhD degree in April 2003
from the University of Pretoria; his thesis, Procedures
performed by family physicians in hospital practice in a
developing country (South Africa)an evaluation of clinical anatomy competence, was undertaken under the
guidance of Professor Peter Abrahams from Cambridge University and Professor Jan Meiring from
the University of Pretoria. He received a Commonwealth Scholarship for this study. From this work, he
developed a multimedia CD-ROM called The Virtual
Procedures Clinic, which was published by Primal Pictures and distributed and used worldwide.
At the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 he
embarked on a post-doctorate research program in
Maastricht in The Netherlands, by invitation from
Professor H. van Mameren at the University of Limburg. The title of the project was The functional anatomical basis of injuries to the ligamentous and other soft
tissues around the elbow joint. During his short career
as researcher he published close to 20 international

C

2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Dr. Hanno Boon (19702004)

peer-reviewed articles, served on the editorial boards

of two ISI indexed journals, and often reviewed articles for other international journals. Since 2002 he
acted as an Associate Editor for the journal Clinical
*Correspondence to: Dr. Jan H. Meiring, Dept. of Anatomy,
School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of
Pretoria, Pretoria 0002 (PO Box 2034 Pretoria 0001), South
Africa. E-mail: jmeiring@medic.up.ac.za
Received 16 January 2005; Accepted 16 January 2005
Published online in Wiley InterScience
wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ca.20120

(www.interscience.

Obituary

Anatomy and since 2003 as Associate Editor for Surgical and Radiological Anatomy. He was Visiting Professor to the St. Georges University in Grenada in the
West Indies on two occasions during 2004. During
this time he gave a series of lectures on the Clinical
anatomy of practical procedures to medical undergraduate students. He was also invited as co-author for
the 6th Edition of the textbook, McMinns Color Atlas
of Human Anatomy (Elsevier).
Hanno received nearly R400,000 in national and
international research grants since 2000. After his
death, the department was informed that he had
been awarded another major grant from the South
African research-funding unit, the NRF.
The list of various prestigious academic acknowledgments and prizes that he received for his
research include, among others:
 The Wellcome Trust Travel Grant to visit
Cambridge (2000).
 The Conrad Lewin prize for best scientic paper,
awarded to him at a meeting of the British Association of Clinical Anatomists in Glasgow (2001).
 An award for Educational Innovation from the
University of Pretoria for his CD-ROM (The
Virtual Procedures Clinic, Boon et al.) (2002).
 The Lecturer of the Year Award, presented by
2nd year medical and dental students (2002).
 The Exceptional Young Achiever Award, a
prestigious research award from the University
of Pretoria (2003).

225

 The Presidential Travel Award for the best presentation given at the 21st Annual Conference
of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) meeting in San Francisco, USA
(8-11 June 2004).
Among his achievements was his intense involvement with postgraduate student training. He was
course leader for 12 BSc (Hons) and MSc students
between 2002 and 2004. These students, under his
guidance also received many prizes and laurels at
conferences, including:
 A merit award for rst time presenter (M. van
Wyk) at the 33rd Annual Conference of the
Anatomical Society of Southern Africa (2003).
 An award for rst time presenter (A. van
Schoor) and a merit award as rst time presenter (D. Naidoo) during the 34th Annual Conference of the Anatomical Society of Southern
Africa (2004).
The Department of Anatomy of the University of
Pretoria, as well as the international community of
Clinical Anatomists, have lost a vibrant educator,
energetic researcher, respected colleague and dear
friend. He is survived by his wife, Sietske, a neonatal ICU nurse, and three young children, Germien
(6 years old), Julia-Marie (4 years old), and Joel
(2 years old). Sietske is expecting their fourth child
in May of 2005.