Tribute to Ronald W.F. Campbell, MBChB, MRCP, FRCP
1 President, American Heart Association
For the past 20 years, any list of distinguished international cardiologists could have included Ronald W.F. Campbell, who until his death on June 13, 1998, was the British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Newcastle on Tyne and president of the British Cardiac Society.
Ronnie (his preferred first name) and I had been friends and colleagues since the early 1970s when we were both fellows in the Coronary Care Unit at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. At that time, we had significant arguments. I was trying to convince Ronnie that platelets played a major role in patients to be admitted to the Coronary Care Unit. He argued that the challenge was to prevent ventricular fibrillation. As a reminder of our wonderful years in Edinburgh about 25 years earlier, we had a similar argument over a cup of tea at an NASPE meeting in New Orleans, La, about a year ago, the last time I saw Ronnie.
With his talent and genius, Ronnie's immersion in the then relatively
new field of electrophysiology earned him a Medical Research Fellowship
as a visiting cardiologist during 1979 at Duke University Medical
Center in Durham, NC. Duke was the "place to be" for Ronnie and
other cardiologists interested in electrophysiology. Before settling
down to a career in cardiology medicine and research,
Ronnie spent 6 months as a general practitioner in northern
Canada. Those who know Ronnie have undoubtedly heard recollections of
his experiences, including the time when, as a flying doctor