2026 Bronze Medalist
Jan Tjeerd de Faber, MD
Jan Tjeerd de Faber, MD was born 1955 in Kerkrade, the Netherlands, and he studied Psychology and Medicine In Nijmegen and Rotterdam. Dr. de Faber trained as a general practitioner and tropical medicine. He was a post-doc fellow in Visual Sciences with Jack Crawford at the University of Texas at Houston. His residency in ophthalmology was spent at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital, after which he specialized in pediatric ophthalmology in a fellowship with Gunter von Noorden at Baylor College of Medicine in the Cullen Eye institute in Houston, Texas. He returned to the Netherlands in 1991 and became head of the pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus department in the Rotterdam Eye Hospital and the ophthalmology consultant of the Rotterdam Zoo “Blijdorp.” He presented in 2010 the Knapp lecture “Gorilla’s out of the mist.” During his career, he was on the board of several international organizations : ESA, ISA, SOE, IPOSC, and international member of the board of trustees of the AAO. He went on the barricades to fight for a ban on consumer fireworks and founded “Vuurwerkmanifest.nl,” which was signed by 750,000 individuals. In 2025, the Dutch parliament voted with a large majority for a new law to ban consumer fireworks. He was decorated by King Willem Alexander as an officer of the Order of Oranje-Nassau.