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(Hypertension. 2005;45:319.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

In Memoriam

John R. Vane (1927–2004)

Jagiellonian Medical Center, Cracow, Poland
Department of Pharmacology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

"Let us now praise famous men."¹ John R. Vane died on November 26, 2004, marking the end of an era of pharmacological sciences that rested on global biological concepts and addressed nature’s grand design, the human body in motion, not in stasis.

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John Vane was born in Tardebigg, Worcestershire on March 29, 1927, the youngest of 3 children. His father was the son of Russian immigrants and his mother’s family farmed in Worcestershire. The Vane family lived in a suburb of Birmingham, where they weathered World War II, colored by the trappings of war: nights were frequently spent in an air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden.

John Vane studied chemistry at Birmingham University, a subject that did not satisfy his native curiosity. On graduation in 1946, a letter arrived in the Department of Chemistry from Professor J. Harold Burn, Chairman of Pharmacology at Oxford, inquiring if any of the recent graduates would like to be trained in pharmacology. John Vane said "yes" while thinking "I’ll do anything but chemistry." At Oxford, Professor Burn recognized John’s driving curiosity to probe the undiscovered and channeled it into the area of experimental pharmacology. A telling remark is John Vane’s comment on being designated a pharmacologist, "the label hid the truth, as labeling tied one to a discipline." He preferred the label, "experimentalist."²

J. Harold Burn was a remarkable energizer of young scientists, as revealed in John Vane’s commentary on him. This is also a splendid recapitulation of John Vane’s own impact . . . [Full Text of this Article]