Dudrick was born in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, the grandson of Polish immigrants. His father was a coal miner and his mother a factory worker. At age seven he decided to become a doctor after seeing the care his mother received during a serious illness. He graduated Franklin and Marshall College in 1957. In an interview, Dudrick stated:
The entire ethos of Franklin & Marshall College infected me and transformed me from a kid from the coal regions to an avid would-be scholar. They just imbued in me the importance of knowledge, that nothing was more precious than to gain knowledge and then to pass it on to others.
As a surgical resident at the University of Pennsylvania, Dudrick realized that post-surgical malnutrition was a poorly recognized cause of death in patients who could not eat or absorb nutrients. From 1964–1966, working with his mentor, Dr. Jonathon Rhoads, and after many hours in the lab, he was able to keep beagles alive for months with TPN, by-passing their digestive systems. After showing the feasibility in lab animals, in 1967 he applied the technique to sick infants and then adults. Nutrition including carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals were given directly into the circulatory system. In the subsequent decades Dudrick continued making significant contributions to the field. His contribution to field of medicine has been compared to Joseph Lister and Alexander Fleming, among others. The GeisingerSchool of Medicine wrote:
The number of lives of children that have been saved is estimated at over 10 million, and the benefit to adults with a range of conditions is no less substantial. TPN is a lifesaving mainstay of therapy for a great proportion of the most critically ill patients in hospitals worldwide and amounts to one of the most significant developments in the history of surgery.
He was the founding chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; he followed this up becoming chairman of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, and then with professorships at Yale and Geisinger medical schools. He received over 100 national and international awards, including the American Surgical Association’s first Flance/Karl Award in 1997 for his seminal and lifetime scientific contributions to surgery; and the American College of Surgeons Jacobsen Innovation Award in 2005.
