Steven P. Shearing, M.D. '50 Inventor and Opthalmologic Surgeon
Thanks to the creation of the “Shearing Lens” by Steven P. Shearing, M.D. countless thousands of people around the world have experienced the unique joy of improved sight after cataract surgery.
This extraordinary medical breakthrough won Dr. Shearing such honors as being named the Nevada Distinguished Physician of the Year, Nevada Inventor of the Year and induction into the Nevada Inventors Hall of Fame and only the second person to received the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery Innovator’s Award.
After graduating from Brooklyn Tech, Dr. Shearing received his B.A. from Cornell University and was a Fulbright Scholar to the Free University of Berlin from 1956-1957. He received his M.A. from Brandeis University and M.D. from the Boston University of School of Medicine and completed his Residency in Ophthalmology at the University of California at San Francisco. In 1993, the Steven P. Shearing Chair of Ophthalmology was established at the University with a contribution from Johnson & Johnson in his honor.
Dr. Shearing has lectured, participated in medical conferences and demonstrated numerous surgeries worldwide. He has also published extensively and served on the editorial boards of both the Journal of American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and the International Journal of Cataract Surgery.
In one article about medical innovation, Dr. Shearing modestly placed outstanding individual achievement in perspective. “Scientific innovation”, he wrote, “is in a fundamental sense a collective enterprise. Each innovator must stand on the shoulders of other innovators, often more brilliant, who preceded him”. In so many ways, the philosophy of a Brooklyn Tech education.
Dr. Steven Shearing has been married for 49 years to his wife, Miriam, who has for the past eleven years served as a Supreme Court Justice for the State of Nevada. They have three children, Robert, Laurie and Leslie and four grandchildren.
