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(Circulation. 1997;95:2338-2339.)
© 1997 American Heart Association, Inc.

Articles

Thomas W. Smith, MD

1936-1997

Eugene Braunwald, MD

Boston, Mass

	Introduction

 
Thomas Smith was born in Akron, Ohio. He entered Harvard University in 1954, thus beginning an intense, 43-year relationship with this institution. After graduating from Harvard College in 1958 with an AB degree, cum laude, in chemistry, he served for 3 years as a line officer in the US Navy. He then entered Harvard Medical School, from which he graduated in 1965, magna cum laude. Dr Smith spent 9 years at the Massachusetts General Hospital, serving successively as an intern and resident in medicine and as a cardiology Fellow; he then joined the Harvard faculty and was promoted to Professor of Medicine in 1979. In 1974, he became Chief of the Cardiovascular Division at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, and in 1982 he received an additional appointment as Professor of Medicine, Harvard–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

View larger version (84K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Figure 1.

Dr Smith was an extraordinarily gifted and creative investigator. His first article, based on work performed as a medical student in collaboration with Dr James Adelstein on the radiolysis of pancreatic RNA, was published in Radiation Research in 1965. In the late 1960s, while a research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, he (together with Haber and Butler) developed a novel technique for radioimmunoassay of digitalis, one of the most widely used drugs in cardiovascular medicine. This radioimmunoassay made it possible for the first time to measure blood concentrations of digitalis and facilitated the safe use of this important drug. His article on radioimmunoassay of digitalis, which was . . . [Full Text of this Article]