LAYTON—It will be 60 years ago in June that Dr. Daniel Christensen, who had just finished his sophomore year at Davis High School, went to the University of Utah and asked to be admitted. He was 16. 

“It was an unusual request for someone so young,” said Christensen. “They were giving some high school students credit for AP classes. They would occasionally admit someone after their junior year, but they had not ever admitted someone after their sophomore year.”

Now here’s a bit of a story, he said. “The Dean of Admissions was Franklin McKean and he took me seriously. He arranged with some coordination by these other university administrators to design a package that would allow me to be admitted. I’d just turned 16 and the whole package went to the university president, James Fletcher and he approved it.”

Christensen said McKean asked him to report back to the university every decade. “He surely wanted to know if they'd made a decent decision, what was going to happen to my life and career,” he said. “So I have reported back to the university every year for, well, five previous reports and this as it turns out is year six.”

McKean has been gone for 40 years now, said Christensen. “The current Executive Director of Admissions is John Marfield and so this was kind of curious. He wasn't even born by the time this all took place.”

Christensen said he met with Marfield recently. “He said that if this (admission) had been presented to them now they probably wouldn’t do it.”

Being admitted to the University meant Christensen had to leave high school. “I dropped out,” he said. “I remember that fall when school started up again and I was to be a junior at Davis High, I started getting phone calls and my parents got a letter asking where I was and they said I better show up or I was going to fail my junior year. So I never got a high school diploma.”

Before graduating from college, Christensen started medical school. “I went into it without a bachelor’s degree. Wow, so I was not graduating from anything.

Christensen became the youngest doctor in the nation at 22. “I was so young going into medical school and then young getting out of medical school.”

Over the years, Christensen has been a researcher, a professor of psychiatry, medical director, world renowned speaker, record-setter, highly respected thought leader, physician to many, Utah Jazz team doctor and more. 

“The ‘Rainman’ movie is based on my patient Kim Peek,” he said. “He was odd so they wouldn’t let him into the Oscars. We presented him with the academy award.”

He was quite an amazing guy, Christensen said. “Most people don’t know he was a Salt Lake City boy. We began to study him. The study was published in the Scientific American Magazine about what we were learning about his unusual brain and all of his unusual capabilities. People from all over the world would call me.”

In 1993, Luther Wright was the top draft pick by the Jazz, said Christensen. “He began to have mental trouble. I was with the team for a year to see if he could make it in the NBA.”

Christensen also worked with Noble Prize winner Mario Capecchi. “I did some studies with him,” he said. “These were young women with this condition called trichotillomania where they pick out their hair. We were studying it trying to determine if there was a genetic component to it. As it turns out we didn’t find it. We were looking for mutations in a certain gene and they weren’t there.”

The faculty of the University of Utah Department of Psychiatry (1979) with the five graduating residents. Christensen, (second row, left) was on the faculty at the time. Courtesy photo

 Another significant project Christensen was involved in was the study of Alzheimer’s disease. “We took a dozen people with very early Alzheimer’s disease and began to videotape and test and record the course of their illness from very early diagnosis on through their death,” he said. “These kind people donated their brains to my project so that when they passed away we could do autopsies to study their brains.”

In 2011, Christensen was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alzheimer’s Association.

“Dan is an incredible person,” said his colleague Ross VanVrenkin who was CEO of the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute while Christensen was medical director and has been at the university with him for about the last 40 years. “He’s brilliant. He’s an excellent teacher too. He could get anybody to do anything everyone liked to work with him.” 

He’s really contributed a wealth of knowledge in his profession in psychiatry, said VanVrenkin. “It’s impressive that someone as brilliant as he is is so down to earth.”   

After a long and prestigious career Christensen retired in July. “It’s probably going to be hard to let that go after that many years,” he said. “I went in as a student. I stayed as a resident in training. In 1976 I was on the faculty and I’ve been up there ever since.”