Abraham ("Abe") Guz: a life devoted to breathing and breathlessness.

Abstract

It is with great sadness that we inform you that Abe Guz passed away on April 11, 2014 at the age of 84. Abe Guz was Professor of Medicine at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in London, UK between 1973 and 1982, and subsequently became Professor and Head of the Department of Medicine of the joint Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, University of London until September 1994. He will be remembered for his contribution to our understanding of breathing control and of breathlessness. Abe Guz was born in 1929 in East London to Russian Jewish parents who came to England in the 1920s. In 1947, he attended Charing Cross Hospital Medical School where he was a brilliant student, winning the Gold Medal of the School and graduating with the highest honours in medicine and surgery. After serving in the army for 2 years as part of National Service as Chief Medical Officer in Germany, Abe returned to London as a senior house officer at the Hammersmith Hospital. Like many budding clinical scientists of the time, he shortly left for the USA to become a Research Fellow at Harvard University and then Senior Fellow at the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI), University of California San Francisco. He trained under Julius Comroe whom he said taught him to “think” and whom he described as someone who had “the great facility of summarising what was not known”. At the CVRI, he collaborated with Julien Hoffman, a paediatric cardiologist, to develop methods of measuring blood flow and cardiac output. Abe returned to the UK in 1961, as Assistant Lecturer in the newly created Department …