Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th century poet, considered the eye as a window to one’s soul. Saint Jerome wrote that eyes “confessed the secrets of the heart.”

The eye is something that Dr. Stuart L. Fine, chairman of the department of ophthalmology and director of the Scheie Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, has pondered for more than 30 years. He has specialized in diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration, but he also finds the eye as striking and mysterious as the great poets and thinkers. “The eye is a beautiful organ,” says Dr. Fine, 62, and a 1966 graduate. “Just looking at the cornea or retina, it is like looking at art.”

At a time when eye centers around the country are contracting, Dr. Fine continues to build his department into one of the country’s leading clinical and research centers. He has about 50 full-time faculty members, and he is adding about three new members to the department a year. “I’d like to be able to grow the program much more quickly,” Dr. Fine says.

Dr. Fine heads an extensive operation with about 300 people that encompasses everything from patient care to teaching; to research; to fund raising. The research enterprise under Dr. Fine includes the F.M. Kirby Center for Molecular Ophthalmology, the first molecular biology center focused on the development of gene therapy for hereditary causes of vision loss.

The center for hereditary retinal degeneration evaluates patients from around the world with this disease. Its scientists quantify the function of each layer of the retina using sophisticated techniques.

Within the Vivian Simkins Lasko Retinal Physiology Laboratory, blood flow to the retina is measured to determine risk factors for progression diabetes, macular degeneration and glaucoma.

Dr. Fine has raised millions of dollars, and he has brought in top research scientists. One is Dr. Maureen Maguire, director of the center for preventive ophthalmology and biostatistics, and vice chairman of the department for clinical research. She conducts studies on treatment of age-related macular degeneration among other projects. “She is just the best there is in the world,” Dr. Fine says.

Dr. Fine wants to build the university’s research capabilities so that it gains more expertise in glaucoma and the cornea, and he wants to expand its ocular oncology division. “One worry is space. The seams are bursting,” Dr. Fine says. “If I could have another 10,000-square-feet, I would fill it with top-flight scientists.”

Dr. Fine has led a number of studies on ocular melanoma and macular degeneration. He was the chairman of a study that involved 2,300 patients in 43 centers across the country. The patients had cancerous tumors in one eye and were treated with preoperative radiation. In patients with smaller tumors, Dr. Fine and his colleagues found that there was no need to remove the eye because survival rates were as good as if the cancerous eye had been extracted. Patients who had large tumors and had their eye removed had no need for preoperative radiation, according to the study, which ran from 1986 to 2004. The research also found that 10 years after the cancerous eye was removed, the remaining eye’s vision was retained. “It is the largest study ever done on patients with eye cancer, and it has generated an enormous amount of attention,” Dr. Fine says.

A native of Baltimore, Dr. Fine knew he wanted to become a physician when he was a little boy. His neighbor, a pediatrician, used to make house calls and stopped by to check on young Stuart. “I liked my pediatrician,” Dr. Fine says. “I was drawn to be a physician by the manner in which physicians interacted with their patients.”

When he was about 10 years old, Dr. Fine also thought about becoming a dentist because another neighbor, who was a dentist, used to let the youngster pass instruments to him while he worked on patients.

Dr. Fine entered medical school in 1962 and graduated four years later. From 1966 to 1967 he did a straight medicine internship at Maryland. He became acting chief of the professional training section, neurological and sensory disease control program at the U.S. Public Health Service in Arlington, Va. In Virginia, a colleague persuaded him to look into ophthalmology. The two sponsored a three-day international symposium and also published a textbook on the treatment of diabetic retinopathy, which Dr. Fine calls a “landmark publication.”

From 1969 to 1972, Dr. Fine was a resident at the University of Florida. He then became an NIH special fellow in retinal diseases at the Johns Hopkins’ Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore. Dr. Fine leaned more toward academics than setting up a medical practice. “I just always enjoyed the university,” he says. “I had a large practice, but it was within the confines of the university.”

He became an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University, associate professor of ophthalmology and professor of ophthalmology until he left in1991. At Johns Hopkins he studied under Dr. Arnall Patz, a world-renowned researcher on eye diseases, who became his mentor and friend. Dr. Patz received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush in June.

Dr. Fine has received numerous awards and has been listed among the “Best Doctors in America.” He doesn’t have hobbies, but he downhill skis, fly fishes, and, in the summertime, walks an hour each day with his wife, Ellie, to whom he has been married for 40 years. The couple have two grown children and four grandchildren.

Dr. Fine sees himself educating the next generation of doctors and scientists who one day will develop newer and better treatments for some of the major causes of blindness. Without hesitation, Dr. Fine says: “They have my passion. I think it’s infectious, and contagious.”