Martin Marc Cummings, MD (1920-2011), was director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) from 1964 to 1983, and subsequently Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine . During his two decades at the NLM, it was transformed into a unique international biomedical communications center, tr and one of the most advanced scientific libraries in the world. During this time, NLM was established as a new, civilian entity on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. [it was already a civilian agency, and already on campus, but became an official component of NIH in 1968].