IN MEMORANDUM

RONALD JAMES MARTENS 1940 - 2023

After graduating from veterinary school (1965), Ron joined a mixed animal practice, mostly equine, in Georgetown, Kentucky. After he spent a year in the practice, he became a resident veterinarian at Castleton Farm, a large Standardbred horse farm near Lexington. From there he achieved and completed a clinical surgery and medicine internship and residency position at the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School. He completed a 3-year post-doctoral (non-PhD) degree fellowship in perinatal physiology studying piglet respiratory physiology at University of Pennsylvania's Medical School. He applied this training to foal infectious pulmonary diseases He became a first in professorial standing as an Assistant Professor in Equine Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Ron subsequently joined in a partnership at the Maryland Equine Center in Sparks, Maryland He was later recruited to TAMU’s Veterinary Medicine College to teach and perform clinical service, as well as develop a research program at its Large Animal Department where he obtained his professorship (1993) and emeritus professorship (2009) He became nationally/internationally known for his research on a bacterial infectious respiratory disease in foals He was successful in developing an immunotherapy procedure to help/prevent or lessen its severity In 1984, he became Director of Large Animal Medicine and Surgery Department at TAMU and stepped down in 1993 after almost a decade of leadership. He continued with his research, teaching and clinical service at TAMU until retirement in 2007. He received many awards and honors for his outstanding accomplishments of research at TAMU. Outside of his veterinary career, his interest lay with raising foals and calves of various breeds. He specifically developed an interest in Longhorn cattle. For the last 20 years he and a neighboring veterinarian formed a partnership where they have focused on developing improvements in the breed’s horns and body type through AI and embryo transfer.