Hippocrates: Father of Medicine

The statue of "Hippocrates: Father of Medicine" is a 14-foot-tall, 5,000-pound marble statue commissioned by Sam and Agatha Nakos as a gift from their Nakos Foundation to the University of Alabama Medical Center in 1971.

The sculpture was carved by Greek artist Kostas Georgakas from a block of Pentelic marble, the same stone used in the construction of the Akropolis in Athens. It depicts Hippocrates, the legendary "father of medicine" and purported source of the "Hippocratic oath" still sworn by physicians.

The statue was originally sited on the place between Medical Center Library and the Basic Science Building. It was originally accompanied by a "rooted cutting" from the supposed original "Tree of Hippocrates", an Oriental plane tree (Platanus orientalis) on the South Aegean island of Kos, under an ancestor of which the ancient Greek scholar is said to have instructed students of the Asklepion. The tree is not visible in a 1974 photograph of construction of the School of Optometry building. (Another cutting from the same tree was planted in Walker County in 1981.)

In 1996 the sculpture was moved into the ground-floor lobby of the newly expanded Lister Hill Library building.

External links

• Hippocrates at mhsl.uab.edu