Fredrick M. Wigley

FREDRICK M. WIGLEY, MD is Professor of Medicine, Associate Director of the Division of Rheumatology, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Wigley was born in Alexandria, Virginia. He received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Chicago and his medical degree at the University of Florida. He began his internship on the Osler Medical Service in 1972 and later concluded his residency training in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins University in 1975. After a two year stint in the Navy, he returned to Baltimore and completed his fellowship training in rheumatology at Johns Hopkins in 1979. He has remained at Hopkins throughout the duration of his distinguished 30-plus year career in academic medicine, including promotion to professor of Medicine in 1996. He was the Director of the Johns Hopkins Division of Rheumatology from 1982 to 2002. A nationally recognized leader in his field, Dr. Wigley’s research focuses on the events that cause scleroderma and the signs and symptoms of scleroderma. Dr. Wigley has dedicated his career to improving our understanding and enhancing the lives of patients, with an underlying diagnosis, which represents the most severe end of the entire rheumatology clinical spectrum and giving his patients a renewed sense of hope and optimism. He established the Johns Hopkins Scleroderma Center in 1990 to provide excellent patient care to patients with scleroderma, Raynaud’s phenomenon, and related disorders; to perform clinical and basic science research; and to provide educational opportunities. Currently, the Center is one of the largest scleroderma specialty centers in the world. The Center evaluates and treats five to seven new and 40-60 return scleroderma patients a week. It has more than 3,000 patients in a comprehensive database. He continues his passion for patient care and clinical research, as well as mentoring young investigators in Rheumatology. For more than thirty years, Dr. Wigley has been a major influence in the areas of scleroderma, Raynaud’s, and general rheumatology scholarship. He has authored and co-authored more than 200 articles, including more than 150 peer-reviewed articles (including four papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, five in Annals of Internal Medicine, in addition to 40 in Arthritis & Rheumatism and 26 in the Journal of Rheumatology), 38 invited manuscripts, plus 51 book chapters. He was co-editor on the books entitled Scleroderma: From Pathogenesis to Comprehensive Management and Raynaud’s Phenomenon: A Guide to Pathogenesis and Treatment. He has mentored dozens of postdoctoral fellows, many whom are now leaders in academic rheumatology. Dr. Wigley also has been successful in the procurement of external grant funding in the support of his research program, from the National Institutes of Health, Arthritis Foundation, Scleroderma Research Foundation, multiple pharmaceutical companies, and private foundations. In 2009, Dr. Wigley received the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Distinguished Clinician Scholarship Award. In 2011, he received the ACR Masters Award. In 2012, he was given the RARE Champion of Hope Award for Medical Care and Treatment. This year he received the Mary Betty Stevens Award for excellence in clinical research from the American College of Physicians. Dr. Wigley and his wife, Carol, live in Baltimore County and are the proud parents of Julie, Joy, and her husband Keir Joyce and the grandparents of Ryan and Emma Joyce.