About Gary

Gary Friedman as a young boy at the piano

Born in 1934 and raised in University Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, I received my higher education at Antioch College, The University of Chicago, and Harvard University.
My main career has been as a physician-epidemiologist. I worked in the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research for 30 years including 7 years as its Director.

Since officially retiring from Kaiser Permanente in 1999, I have been Consulting Professor, then Adjunct Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine and I continued research activities at Kaiser Permanente, service on its Institutional Review Board, and service as an Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology. I wrote a textbook, Primer of Epidemiology, and have authored or coauthored over 300 other scientific publications. Five editions of Primer of Epidemiology have been published since 1974, the latest in 2004. The book has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Chinese. I was President, American Epidemiological Society, 1999-2000, received an Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Cancer Institute in 1989, a Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame Award, Cleveland Heights High School, 1991, and a Distinguished Service Award from the University of Chicago Medical Alumni Association, June 3, 2000.

For more information, consult Marquis Who’s Who in America, where I have been included since 1995. The Gary Friedman Symposium, published in the Permanente Journal in the Fall 1998 issue, and readable at the Journal’s website gives more information about my epidemiologic career.

My musical education started with piano at age 5. I also played trumpet in junior high and high school and studied organ and music theory during teen age. Playing and improvising on the piano only occasionally during adulthood, I returned to music seriously at age 54, studying oboe and English horn with Janet Popesco Archibald. I currently play these instruments in the College of Marin Symphony, the Lucas Valley Chamber Orchestra, the Bohemian Club Band and a woodwind quintet and octet.

I have served on the Board of Directors of Chamber Musicians of Northern California. Starting at age 64, I studied composition with Alexis Alrich in the Adult Extension Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. My musical works and their availability are described in this web site. I have been grateful and fortunate to have the honor of performances of several of my compositions by community orchestras and various chamber groups and by professional musicians at my 70th and 80th birthday parties..

Updating at this time in April, 2020, it appears that I will not live past this year.
So my dates will be 1934-2020.

[Gary passed away on July 18, 2020.]