Joseph Janse

Joseph Janse shaped chiropractic above all as a pioneer of education and a bridge-builder to science. Born in Middelburg in the Netherlands, he emigrated to the United States as a child with his family and grew up in Utah. He found his way to chiropractic through the lectures of National College president William C. Schulze; in 1938 he graduated from the National College of Chiropractic in Chicago and joined its faculty that same year, teaching anatomy and chiropractic.

In 1945 Janse was appointed president of the National College — an office he held for nearly four decades, until 1983. During this time he led the school from a proprietary institution to a non-profit, scientifically oriented one, and in 1963 had a campus purpose-built for chiropractic education erected in Lombard, Illinois. His particular interest lay in anatomy and biomechanics; formative was his collaboration with the Swiss chiropractic researcher Fred Illi, with whom he studied the mechanics of the pelvis and the sacroiliac joints.

Beyond his own college, Janse was a central figure in building the profession's regulatory structures. He was instrumental in founding the Council on Chiropractic Education, whose forerunner he helped build from 1947 and over which he presided — a path that in 1974 led to recognition of chiropractic education by the U.S. Department of Education. In 1967 he presented "The Scientific Basis of Chiropractic" before a committee of the U.S. Congress. Janse embodied the academic, scientific pole of the profession and is regarded by many as the father of modern chiropractic education. He died in 1985.