(Hypertension. 1998;32:635.)
© 1998 American Heart Association, Inc.
James Conway 1921–1998
Peter Sleight, MD1
1 University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital,
Oxford, UK
Edward D. Frohlich, MD2
2 Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation,
New Orleans, La
This year has brought to the Council for
High Blood Pressure Research the passing of many of its original
founders who were responsible for worldwide recognition of systemic
arterial hypertension as a major disease that must be
understood more clearly and treated effectively. Dr James Conway was
one such person, who spent an active and fulfilling clinical and
investigative career in Great Britain and the United States. He died on
May 25, 1998, at the age of 76 after a long illness, having imparted
his great talents, experience, and warm personality to many of us.
Most recently, Jim Conway was honorary consultant
cardiologist to the John Radcliffe Hospital of Oxford University. He
was highly respected and much loved by his colleagues, patients, and
friends and will be missed for his generosity, enthusiasm, and
delightful sense of humor. For the past 18 years he worked at Oxford,
never really retired, and he remained a father figure to many British,
American, and other clinical research fellows in Great Britain and the
United States.
Dr Conway was born in Zimbabwe but was educated at Cambridge and
St. Bartholomews Hospital, qualifying in 1946, after which he received
PhD and MD degrees from London and Cambridge Universities,
respectively. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of
London. His first career was as a senior lecturer at Charing Cross
Hospital Medical School, and then in 1956 he moved to the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor as Associate Professor of Medicine, where he
spent the next 15 years. Working with Sidley Hoobler and later with
David Bohr and Stevo Julius, he established an international reputation
as an accomplished clinical physiologist. He was one of the earliest
pioneers of the measurement of cardiac output and other circulatory
variables in humans. In 1969, he moved to Georgetown
University as full Professor of Medicine, working closely with Edward
Freis, but partly for family reasons he returned to Britain in
1971 as manager of biological research in what was then ICI
Pharmaceuticals (now Zeneca). It was there that his expertise in human
circulatory physiology proved to be of great value in the research and
development of many new compounds and, in particular, the new
ß-adrenergic receptor blocking agents which were to form the
foundation of their modern cardiovascular
pharmaceutical portfolio. He retired from ICI in 1980 and happily
attached himself to the Department of Cardiovascular
Medicine at Oxford, where he played an important part in the
development of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring and of trial
methodology designed to determine more precisely the effects of
different treatments using crossover designs in randomized comparisons.
This concept markedly reduced the numbers of patients needed to obtain
definitive answers.
Although he was by nature an extremely modest person, the quality
of his work was acknowledged by a number of awards such as a founding
fellow of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research, the CIBA
Foundation Award for research in aging, an Established Investigatorship
from the American Heart Association, and the Folkow award for his
studies involving integrated physiology.
Most of all, however, Jim Conway was an extremely unselfish
individual who readily helped others to achieve their research aims. He
was seen always more in the research laboratory than anywhere else, and
he continued this commitment despite his illness until a few months
before his death. In addition to his research help, he and his wife
Betty were very generous with their time, looking after the young
people working in the laboratory and their families. They will remember
him, as will his many friends and his extended family, for the
wonderful meals the Conways organized for the fellows and their
families, contributing ethnic dishes from many parts of the world. He
leaves behind a huge bibliography of solid research achievements,
together with many wise reviews, particularly his distinguished review
on "Hemodynamic Aspects of Essential Hypertension in
Humans" published in Physiological
Reviews (1984;64:617–660). He is survived by his wife Betty and
his five children.
