Ed Wood was born on February 5, 1925 in Charlottesville, Virginia. His father was an esteemed professor of medicine at the University of Virginia, with a specialty in cardiology. As a high school student Ed worked in the laboratory of Dr. Eugene Landis, who later became chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. It was under the guidance of Dr. Landis that Ed Wood began his interest in medical research.
During the war he was in the Navy V-12, where he attended Davidson and Duke. After discharge he spent 2 years at the University of Virginia Medical School and then transferred to Harvard, where he received his MD degree in 1949. He took his residency training at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital in Boston, where he became Chief Resident in Medicine. I had the great good fortune to be an intern under his cheerful and learned leadership. He became a Research Fellow in the cardiovascular laboratory of Dr. Robert Wilkins and a faculty member at Boston University.
During the Korean War, Ed, spent 2 years as a captain and flight surgeon at the US Air Force School of Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas. While there he conducted high-altitude research and took part in testing the effect of atomic explosions on the eyes of the men who watched them from an aircraft. In 1958, Ed joined the faculty at the Medical College of Georgia as Director of the Georgia Heart Association Laboratories for Cardiovascular Research. While there, he published many papers on vascular disease and wrote a well-received book titled The Veins.
He joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in 1964 as the Virginia Heart Association Research Professor of Cardiovascular Research. He also served as acting chairman of the Department of Physiology and as acting dean of the School of Medicine. Ed served on the board of Directors of the University of Virginia Medical Alumni Association and was its President from 1977 to 1978. He received the Outstanding Medical Alumnus Award in 1990. While at Virginia, he co-authored a paper on high-altitude pulmonary edema with S.R. Roy, physician to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The research involved living in an Indian Army Base high in the Himalayas. Prime Minister Gandhi had to give her consent for Americans to do research at this sensitive army base on the border with China.
Ed left Virginia in 1969 to become Chairman of Medicine at the Pennsylvania Hospital and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a position he held for 21 years. He established the J. Edwin Wood Clinic, an independent, nonprofit, full-service medical and surgical facility that provided quality health care to adults without ability to pay for it. It remains active today.
Ed served on the Board of Directors of the American Heart Association from 1968 to 1969, and was president of the American Heart Association's Health Promotion Council of southeastern Pennsylvania and president of the southeastern Pennsylvania chapter.
Ed was devoted to the American Clinical and Climatological Association and held many leadership roles over the years. He became a member in 1963, served as Secretary-Treasurer from 1968 to 1979, and was President in 1985. He was on the Council for many years. His wife Ann said “the ACCA was the joy of his life. Mine too.”
Ed enjoyed all sports, but particularly loved sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. Later in life he took up running and completed five marathons. At age 54 he ran the Boston Marathon in 4 hours and 15 minutes. He ran it again at age 63.
Ed died at age 85 on August 15, 2010, of complications from bladder cancer. He is survived by his wife, Ann Jones Wood, who he met in high school and married in 1948. He is also survived by two sons, Edwin Duncan Wood and Dr. James Baker Wood; two daughters, Emily Battle Wood Starkey and Ann Jones Wood Gregg; eleven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.