STORY: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/04/113896/neurobiologist-shares-personal-journey-life-lessons-annual-last-lecture
Igor Mitrovic, MD, arrived at the JFK airport in New York on Dec. 24, 1991, a refugee from a country that was sliding into chaos.
Just out of medical school, he had come to join his wife. But he looked young and spoke broken English, and a customs agent didn't believe he was a doctor or that he was married.
They were about to send him back, when another agent passed by, smiled broadly and said, "Oh, man, let him go! It's Christmas Eve!"
So began Mitrovic's unlikely journey from Yugoslavia, where he grew up in a small Croatian town wanting to be a family physician, to UC San Francisco, where he became a respected neurobiologist and a beloved teacher.
