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Dr. Nicholas T. Zervas was the Chief of the Neurosurgical Service at MGH from 1977 to 2000. Born in Lynn Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard College in 1950 and four years later from the University of Chicago School of Medicine. His honors thesis was based on research with Dr. Theodore Rasmussen on differential motor responses to stimulation of the motor cortex. He trained as a surgical intern at New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center, and as an assistant resident in neurology and neuropathology at the Montreal Neurological Institute. At Montreal he began his studies in vascular research, examining the effect of corticosteroids on middle cerebral artery ligation in the monkey. After two years of service in the Army Medical Corps, he began his training at MGH. During his elective year of MGH training he traveled abroad to study stereotactic cerebral surgery with Professor Jean Talairach and Gabor Szikla at the Hospital Ste Anne in Paris.

Dr. Zervas spent five years at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia as Assistant Professor before returning to Massachusetts and becoming Chief of Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He held that post for 10 years before joining MGH as Chief of Neurosurgery in 1977. At that time, he was also named Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Zervas developed a radiofrequency procedure for transnasal stereotactic thermal hypophysectomy to treat patients with diabetic retinopathy, metastatic breast carcinoma, and acromegaly. He was also active in modifying stereotactic operations for treating disorders of movement and carried out the first stereotactic cerebellar ablations for Parkinson’s disease. With Professor Eric Cosman of MIT and Dr. Paul Chapman, he developed the first telemetric intracranial pressure- monitoring device applicable to ventricular shunting procedures. Together with Professor Richard Wurtman of MIT he documented, for the first time, disorders of catecholamine metabolism resulting from cerebral ischemia.

As a youth, Dr. Zervas was a serious student of piano. He has continued his interest in music by serving as a Trustee of the New England Conservatory of Music, as an Overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Chairman of the Council on Arts and Humanities of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.