Richard Hurt, M.D.

Richard Hurt, M.D. (I ’76), is an author of the book “The Mayo Clinic Nicotine Dependence Center: A History.” In 1986, Dr. Hurt and Professor Kenneth Offord met to discuss what would become the Nicotine Dependence Center. Dr. Hurt was an alumnus of the Smokers’ Clinic, started in 1975, and Professor Offord had worked with pulmonary researchers; both had become aware that research had not resulted in help for patients to stop smoking. The current requests for action were from Mayo Clinic physicians with hospitalized patients facing dire consequences if they continued to smoke. The discussion that day eventually led to the opening of the Smoking Cessation Center in 1988, and it was expanded and renamed the Nicotine Dependence Center in 1990.