Bennet Omalu

Omalu Bennet and his wife Prema Mutiso, who is a Kenyan by birth, have two sons, Mark and Ashly. He resides in San Joaquin County in California with his family and is a Catholic by faith.

Bennet Omalu was born on 30 September, 1968 in South Eastern Nigeria when the country was ravaged by civil war. His father was a mining engineer while his mother worked as a seamstress. Omalu has five older siblings, and one sibling younger to him.

The civil war in Nigeria compelled his family to be on the run, returning to their home when he was two years old.

He started attending primary school when he was only three and got admitted at the Enugu Federal Government College for his secondary education. He became eligible for the University of Nigeria’s medical school when he was just 16 years old.

In June 1990, Bennet received his MBBS degree after which he did an internship. He served as a physician in Jos, a city in Nigeria’s Middle Belt for three years.

Moshood Abiola’s failure to win the presidency in a rigged election in 1993 disillusioned him, following which he started scouting for scholarships to study in the US.

Bennet Omalu immigrated to the U.S. in 1994 and arrived at Seattle for completing a fellowship in epidemiology from the University of Washington.

In 1995, he shifted to New York City to take up a residency program in anatomical and clinical pathology in Harlem Hospital Center under the aegis of Columbia University.

After he completed the residency program, he interned under Cyril Wecht, a celebrated forensic expert, at the Coroner’s office in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh to gain experience in forensic pathology. His profound interest in neuropathology helped him to earn a total of eight degrees in neuropathology and pathology as well as board certifications and fellowships.

The University of Pittsburgh granted him a fellowship in pathology in 2000, followed by another in neuropathology in 2002. He received a MPH (Master of Public Health) in 2004 in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health and the Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business awarded him a MBA in 2008.

Bennet Omalu’s revolutionary and unprecedented exploration of CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy started in 2002 with the autopsy of Mike Webster, a Pittsburgh Steelers player, and a ‘Pro Football Hall of Fame’ member. CTE was a neurological facet linked with persistent head trauma which was previously detected in boxers who suffered concussions resulting from heavy blows.

By conducting postmortem examination on Weber who had battled depression, extreme mood swings, drug abuse, cognitive debilitation, and died unpredictably following numerous suicide attempts, Bennet had turned the spotlight back on CTE. There was a lot of controversy around CTE as medical professionals were divided on the cogency of this neurologic condition.

Omalu was very eager to scan Mike’s brain as the latter had behaved distressingly prior to his death. Although Omalu could not detect anything abnormal in Weber’s brain during the autopsy, he persisted with his research. He reviewed stained tissue samples with his own money to confirm his suspicion that Mike had ‘dementia pugilistica’.

Omalu found tau protein clusters in Weber’s brain that had the potential of impairing an individual’s cognitive function and motor skills. He became the first forensic pathologist to discover CTE in an American footballer—a neurological affliction which had earlier been discovered in athletes and boxers.

Bennet reestablished his findings on CTE, following discussions with University of Pittsburgh’s senior faculty members, and presented a paper, ‘Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player’ in 2005 to a medical periodical ‘Neurosurgery’ for publication. In the paper, he also laid emphasis on carrying out advanced and extensive research on the condition.