Dr. Sadao Otani was born in 1892 in Japan. He studied at Chiba University and took postgraduate courses in Germany. From 1926 until his death in 1969, Otani was a central figure at Mount Sinai Hospital of New York, where he provided brilliant expertise in diagnostic and surgical pathology for over decades. As his publications were relatively few, he never developed a national or international reputation. However, in New York he was regarded as the epitome of surgical pathologists and a respected teacher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He was credited with the discovery of eosinophilic granuloma of the bones (a form of bone disease) and the glomus jugulare tumor of the middle ear, which is referred to as “Otani’s tumor.”