In our series profiling the world's leading and most influential cardiologists, EHJ CardioPulse meets Professor Murray D Esler.

Abstract

Professor Murray Esler MBBS PhD is Senior Director of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and is renowned for his work on the development of a valid method for testing the human sympathetic nervous system. The application in turn provided a rationale for testing beta-adrenergic blockers in heart failure, and a rationale for developing the renal denervation treatment of hypertension. Born in the Australian provincial city of Geelong, 80 km south of Melbourne, I received local state education to university entry. The fourth of five children, tertiary education was not on the horizon until I came along. My father was an ambulance officer, who in a less regulated era took me in the ambulance to calls. I am sure this influenced my interest in medicine. As a young person I was an enthusiastic sportsman, playing cricket and Australian Rules football. My wife Rosemary is a psychiatrist and we have three daughters (Danielle, doctor; Nicky, lawyer; Simone, engineer), but my youngest, a son Ben, broke the mould to become an actor and more recently was in the cast of the US TV series Hell on Wheels. ![Graphic][1] My interest in medicine came before my interest in science. As a 7 year-old I had whooping cough over the 6-week summer vacation, during which I was confined to bed (standard care for the times). I felt cheated, but saw a lot of my family doctor, a caring man with stately demeanour who I admired and decided to emulate. My trips in the ambulance with my father clinched the case that I would become a doctor. My first exposure to science was in childhood encyclopaedias, which I enjoyed, then in high school chemistry and physics classes. For the Melbourne University medical course, science was an obligatory preamble in … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif