Daniel Casper
Daniel Casper is board certified in ophthalmology, and a Diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners and a Fellow of the American Board of Ophthalmology. He is currently professor emeritus in Ophthalmology, and Special Lecturer in Ophthalmology.
After receiving his degree from Union College in Schenectady with a major in Biological Sciences and a minor in Art, he worked briefly as an assistant graphic designer on Madison Avenue before enrolling at Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Boston. There, he received a PhD in Anatomy, studying the effects of monosodium glutamate on developing chick embryo retina. After a postdoctoral fellowship in experimental retinal pathology at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he enrolled at Albany Medical College of Union University and completed training and internship there in 1986. He completed his residency in ophthalmology at the Edward S. Harkness Eye Institute at Columbia, where he has been affiliated ever since.
After a fellowship in orbital and oculoplastic surgery with Dr. Stphen Trokel at Columbia, he joined the Eye Institute faculty in 1990 and became a Professor of Ophthalmology in 2014 and a professor emeritus in 2023. He practiced general, medical ophthalmology at Columbia, specializing in diabetic eye disease, and dividing his time between the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center and the Harkness Eye Institute Faculty Practice. In addition to clinical practice, he participated in various research projects with his colleagues, and regularly taught VP&S medical students in the Foundations of Clinical Medicine course and the Introductory Ophthalmology course. He also taught basic principles and ophthalmic anatomy and diabetic retinopathy to residents in ophthalmology, internal medicine and family practice medicine, endocrinology fellows, PhD students in the Mechanisms of Human Disease Course, and visiting endocrinologists. He served as a Visiting Scientist at CUNY’s Lehman College School of Natural and Social Sciences from 2017–2019.
For many years he taught orbital and ocular anatomy at the Harvard Medical School Lancaster Course in Ophthalmology and the Basic Science Course in Ophthalmology at Columbia VP&S, where he and Dr. John Merriam ran the Orbital Dissection subsection, and he performed a full demonstration prosection for the class each year.
In addition to writing various book chapters, Dr. Casper was senior editor and illustrator of the books Orbital Disease: Imaging and Analysis with Columbia colleagues Stephen Trokel and Linda Chi, and The Columbia Guide to Basic Elements of Eye Care with Ophthalmology Chair Dr. Jack Cioffi. He has created audiovisual presentations on diabetic retinopathy for the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, and on ocular trauma for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Since leaving graphic art and beginning graduate school, he has provided medical illustrations for many of his colleagues, and has every intention of returning to “real” art in retirement.
He has served as an Ophthalmology reviewer and editor at the Everyday Health web page in their Health Expert Network since 2021.
As Dr. Casper was preparing for retirement, he learned that the 1931 Eye Institute building, designed by John Gamble Rogers (the original Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center architect and E.S. Harkness’ favorite), and Casper’s refuge since 1986, was about to be demolished, and a new cancer center constructed on its site. The building’s eighth floor housed a library, with a superb collection of rare books and medical and ophthalmic artifacts that was begun by the Institute’s first director, Dr. John M. Wheeler, and had grown over the years.
Dr. Casper, who had been a member and Chair of the Wheeler Library committee, accepted the task of curating, cataloguing, and restoring the Wheeler collection. Most of the artifacts, which had been in storage for 50 years, are now on view in the Presbyterian Hospital Ophthalmology Administrative offices. Stephen Novak, retired Head of Archives & Special Collections at Columbia University Medical Center, recently completed cataloguing the Wheeler rare books, which number over 370. Dr. Casper currently continues his efforts to create a complete catalogue and description of the collection, which contains well over 400 artifacts. In addition, he has begun writing a series of web pages summarizing the building’s history and describing some of the gems found in the Wheeler collection:
https://www.vagelos.columbia.edu/departments-centers/ophthalmology/about-us/our-history
Updated June 3, 2025