Background
Griffith Rutherford Harsh IV was born in Saint Louis in 1953. The son of his namesake, Griffith Harsh III, the younger Griff became determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a neurosurgeon.
Griffith Rutherford Harsh IV was born in Saint Louis in 1953. The son of his namesake, Griffith Harsh III, the younger Griff became determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a neurosurgeon.
He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University and became a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford.
He is a direct descendent of Revolutionary War General and North Carolina State Senator Griffith Rutherford. Griffith Harsh IV graduated from Harvard College in 1975 and Harvard Medical School in 1980. He completed his residency at the Department of Neurosurgery and the Brain Tumor Research Center at the University of California in San Francisco (University of California, San Francisco) in 1986.
The following year he completed his fellowship in neurosurgery at University of California, San Francisco. In addition, Griff Harsh completed a fellowship in clinical neuro-oncology at University of California, San Francisco and another fellowship in skull base surgery and acoustic neuromas at the University of Pittsburgh.
During his career, Harsh has focused on the surgical and radiation treatment of pituitary adenomas, glial tumors, and acoustic neuromas. He also serves as a Professor of Neurosurgery at the Stanford University Medical Center and Program Director of Neurosurgery Residency at Stanford.
He is certified in neurological surgery by the American Board of Neurological Surgery. Harsh has been credited with the creation of a device that assists in aggressive intratumoral radiation.
In 2001, Stanford released news of this device and preliminary studies indicated that the risks associated with radiation therapy for brain tumors are noticeably lower when using this device.
Approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the device was tested in a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the Stanford Brain Tumor Center currently uses it in patients with newly diagnosed or recurring primary or metastatic brain tumors. He has published over 100 clinical and scientific articles, including several identifying key pathways in brain tumorigenesis, appearing in PNAS, Science, and the New England Journal of Medicine.