Professor John Douglas Swales, MD, FRCP 1935–2000

This communication records the immense contribution made by John Swales to clinical science and the practice of medicine, most notably in the field of hypertension. In September 2000, John suffered a cardiac arrest while browsing the local bookshop on the University of Leicester campus. He was resuscitated by colleagues but died 2 weeks later without regaining consciousness. It was a tragic, sudden, and premature end to a glorious career. John Swales was born in Leicester in 1935 and was educated at the local grammar school. His intellectual abilities were recognized early when he was awarded a major scholarship to study medicine at the University of Cambridge, from which he graduated with first class honors and the University prize. He completed his undergraduate medical education at Westminster hospital medical school, University of London, before embarking on a distinguished postgraduate medical career in London and Manchester, where Sir Douglas Black was his mentor. In 1974, he was invited to become the Foundation Professor and Chairman of Medicine at the new medical school at the University of Leicester. It was a daunting challenge, to build an academic department of medicine from scratch, and one that John could readily have avoided by accepting one of the many comfortable established positions on offer elsewhere. That was not his style, and with relish, John accepted the challenge to help build a medical school in his hometown at Leicester. He served as Chairman of Medicine from …