Luis Silva-Carvalho completed his MD in Coimbra, Portugal (1977). Afterwards he joined his father at the Department of Physiology, University of Lisbon, conducting studies on arterial chemoreception for his PhD (1984). He continued these and other studies on autonomic function, eventually succeeding his father as Head of Department (1998). In the interim, he spent several years (1989-97) in Mike Spyer’s laboratory at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, collaborating on studies involving cerebellar and hypothalamic control of cardiorespiratory function. Back in Lisbon, he established an internationally recognised programme of autonomic research. He was instrumental in the formation of the Institute of Molecular Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine in Lisbon, leading its Unit of Autonomic Neuroscience, and served as the Vice-Rector of the University of Lisbon (1995-8). He became a Foreign Member of The Physiological Society (1989), and later an Ordinary Member. He used the services of The Society, and the Research Defence Society, in countering growing anti-vivisection tendencies in Portugal.

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