Francis Forster; Was Georgetown Medical Dean

Dr. Francis M. Forster, 94, a leading neurologist who in the 1950s served as dean of Georgetown University Medical School, died of congestive heart failure Feb. 23 at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati.

Dr. Forster was dean of the medical school from 1953 to 1958, a period in which he helped raise $3 million to fund the construction of what is now the Gorman Diagnostic and Research Center.

Research grants more than tripled during his tenure, from $356,000 to $1.3 million.

Dr. Forster, who while serving as dean was also chairman of the neurology department, worked on high-profile medical cases during and after his years in Washington.

In 1957, he was among the team of doctors who treated President Dwight D. Eisenhower after the former commanding general suffered a mild stroke.

Dr. Forster, who held leadership positions in national and international organizations, testified as an expert witness for the prosecution in the 1964 murder trial of Jack Ruby, who fatally shot accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Dr. Forster, a founder and past president of the American Academy of Neurology, was called to the stand to rebuke defense claims that Ruby shot Oswald because of an epileptic seizure.

Born in Cincinnati, he graduated from Xavier University and received a medical degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1937.

Dr. Forster served his internship in Cincinnati and his residency in neurology at Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.

He spent seven years at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia before becoming chairman of the neurology department at Georgetown in 1950.

He succeeded Paul McNally as dean of the medical school three years later. Outgoing and personable, he established a collegial form of administration, said his son, Denis Forster of Wilton, Conn., and Kittery Point, Maine.

Dr. Forster left Georgetown in 1958 to join the faculty at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine in Madison. Before settling into his new job, he participated in a medical exchange mission with the Soviet Union, traveling to institutes and facilities in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tiblisi and Sukumi, in Georgia.

He spent most of his career at the University of Wisconsin, from which he retired in 1978. He then worked as director of the Francis M. Forster Epilepsy Center in Madison before retiring to Cincinnati in 1982.

Dr. Forster wrote more than 100 research articles and several books on neurology. He was a past president of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Epilepsy Society; a consultant to the surgeons general of the Air Force, Navy and the U.S. Public Health Service; and a member of the Cosmos Club.

His wife of 67 years, Helen Kiley Forster, died in 2004.

In addition to his son, survivors include four other children, Mark B. Forster of Madison, Susan Cole of Sun Prairie, Wis., Kathleen Marot of Cincinnati and Marianne Kopp of Beloit, Wis.; six grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.