Philip Poole-Wilson studied at Cambridge and then St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1967 and joining the academic department of medicine. In 1973 he was awarded a British Heart Foundation (BHF) Fellowship to the ‘Heart Lab’ at UCLA in California, where he studied the effects of acidosis and ischaemia on myocardial function and Ca2+ exchange. He was appointed Senior Lecturer at the Cardiothoracic Institute (1976) with honorary consultant physician status at the National Heart Hospital, allowing him to investigate K+ loss from hypoxia and ischaemic tissue in both laboratory and catheter lab. Appointed Reader (1980) and given a chair by London University two years after, in 1988 he became Simon Marks and BHF Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College. He served as councillor (1988), secretary (1990) and president (1994-6) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and president of the World Heart Federation (2003-5). On retirement (2008), he was made Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Investigator.

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