My family were refugees from Nazi Germany. They arrived in New York City in 1939 almost penniless.
I grew up in Harlem, but we moved to the Bronx when I was 14, and I got into the Bronx High School of Science.
I was babysitting in our apartment building when visitors from Montreal told me about McGill University. My high school counselor told me how prestigious McGill University was, so I applied. I received my acceptance a few weeks later – probably because I was attending a very famous American high school, though I did have excellent grades. No one in my family had ever gone to college.
I forgot to apply to a dormitory, which at the time was a separate application. I wound up living in the student ghetto, and joined a fraternity to save money on room and board. I was pre-med, but one of the older fraternity brothers told me how hard it was to get into McGill Medicine. He recommended that I get into the Honours Psychology program, as every year Medicine accepted two out of the program’s 20 students.
I succeeded, and spent my junior and senior years with Wallace Lambert, Ronald Melzack, BSc’50, MSc’51, PhD’54, and many other famous psychologists from this world-renowned program. I graduated from Science in 1969 with honours in psychology and from Medicine in 1973. That same year I married the love of my life, Leora Teicher Kahn, BA’71, MSW’77. I did three years of pediatric residency in New York City and Boston, and a year of pediatric pathology with research at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
A few years later I started a pediatric practice in a suburb of Houston, Texas. When I started my practice the population was 60,000; it is now 900,000. At the age of 72, I am still practicing alongside two younger female partners, both of whom I trained during their residency at Texas Children’s Hospital. We also have two nurse practitioners on our staff to care for children and adolescents with learning and emotional problems, which is still somewhat unique in a general pediatric practice.
I am on the faculty of three medical schools; two in Houston and one in Galveston. I have taught pediatric residents and third-year medical students for the last 30 years. I have two children: Mark Kahn, an agriculture venture capitalist in India, and Marielle Kahn Weintraub, PhD, one of the world’s experts on the medicinal uses of CBD. I also have a 14-year-old granddaughter who wants to study engineering at McGill.
I lost my mother from breast cancer when I was seven years old, so I always thought I would become a cancer researcher. But in medical school I discovered I was not interested in doing research. So in 2011, Leora and I established the Dr. Raymond and Mrs. Leora Kahn Research Bursary in Memory of Mrs. Marion Kahn, which is for cancer researchers. We felt it was partial payback for the amazing education we both received at McGill University.