Figure. Philip Poole-Wilson, MB, BChir, MD, FRCP
Professor Philip Poole-Wilson, the former British Heart Foundation Simon Marks Professor of Cardiology, died suddenly on his way to work in London on 4 March 2009. He was one month short of his 66th birthday.
As one of the founders of the European Society of Cardiology, he served as its President from 1994 to 1996. He was the Founding Chair of the British Society for Heart Failure; past President of the World Heart Federation; former Head of Cardiac Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London; and Honorary Consultant Physician at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals. Professor Poole-Wilson's undergraduate training was at Trinity College, Cambridge University; this was followed by his going to St. Thomas Hospital Medical School, and later into several different clinical training positions in the United Kingdom.
During his career, he published more than 500 papers and many book chapters on heart failure, coronary heart disease, and the global prevention of heart disease and stroke, his areas of special interest. He received the Mackenzie Medal of the British Cardiovascular Society in 2007, as well as the Prix Europe et Médicine from L'Institut des Sciences de la Santé, Paris, in 2001.
Professor Poole-Wilson considered his work to be his “hobby.” He had recently retired, but he was still working as an Honorary Consultant at Imperial College 3 days a week at the time of his death.
Professor Martin Cowie (Imperial College, London), a long-time friend of Poole-Wilson's and current Chair of the British Society for Heart Failure, said about him, “His philosophy about life in general was that everyone should work together for the greater good. He was successful at everything that he turned his hand to and put the whole force of his personality … which was considerable, into it. He either did a thing properly, or not at all.”
James T. Willerson, MD
Editor-in-Chief, Texas Heart Institute Journal; President and Medical Director, Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, Houston, Texas