Paul Ivan Korner

Abstract

Paul Korner died on October 3, 2012 after a short illness on the day he was to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Hypertension in recognition of his contribution to our understanding of cardiovascular disease, particularly hypertension. His legacies include his own original contributions in the field of circulatory control, the work of many esteemed scientists and academics he trained, and his recent monograph: Essential Hypertension and Its Causes. In >330 publications spanning from the 1950s to the present day, he made important contributions in the field of central nervous control of the circulation, particularly baroreflex and chemo reflex function. He studied how structural adaptations are responsible for many characteristics of the hypertension phenotype, developing the concept of the cardiac and vascular amplifier having been influenced by his friend Bjorn Folkow. In many of these fields, he not only introduced new concepts but also methodologies that were taken up by others. Techniques for studying the baroreflex and autonomic versus nonautonomic contributions to peripheral vascular resistance are examples. He was also among the first to understand that reduction of overall risk was the objective in the prevention of coronary heart disease …