Herbert N. Hultgren, MD

Abstract

Herbert N. Hultgren, Professor of Medicine Emeritus at Stanford, died in October 1997 at age 80 of complications of acute myelogenous leukemia. Herb was a native of northern California and graduated from Stanford University in 1939 and from its School of Medicine in 1943. He completed residency training in medicine and pathology at Stanford and served in Europe in World War II with the US Army Medical Corps. He was a research fellow in cardiology at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory in Boston, Mass, and then returned to Stanford in 1948, where he established the first cardiac catheterization laboratory in northern California and in 1955 became chief of cardiology at Stanford. In 1968, after the Stanford Medical School had relocated from San Francisco to Palo Alto, Calif, Herb was appointed chief of cardiology at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital, a position he held until 1984. I worked with him at Stanford as a cardiology fellow and then as junior faculty member in the cardiology division from 1970 to 1977. I and numerous Stanford students, …