The American Society of Hypertension honours Professor Friedrich C. Luft for Hypertension Research
Prof. Friedrich C. Luft (Photo: Thomas Oberländer/Helios Clinics Berlin-Buch)
The physician and scientist received the prize in a ceremony on May 17, 2005 in San Francisco, CA, USA. Luft’s career has been dedicated to translating basic research into the treatment of cardiovascular disease in humans, and particularly, to training physician-scientists in cardiovascular research, the ASH pointed out. The prize, ($10,000) is named after the British physician Richard Bright (1789 – 1858). Bright first recognized renal disease as a specific entity. He could not measure blood pressure, but recognized that renal and heart disease went hand-in-hand. Bright is honored as the father of nephrology. Friedrich Luft works in the Franz Volhard Clinic for Cardiovascular Diseases, Helios Klinikum Berlin-Buch. The Franz Volhard Clinic is a part of the Medical Faculty of the Charité, University Medicine, Berlin. Friedrich Luft is responsible for a research group at the affiliated Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch.
Friedrich Luft was born in 1942 in Berlin. However, he grew up in the USA after his parents emigrated in 1947. He studied medicine at the JeffersonMedicalSchool in Philadelphia, PA, USA. He was Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Indiana University School of Medicine until 1989. He then came to Germany, first to the University of Erlangen but shortly thereafter to Berlin-Buch. Luft has received numerous honors in the past, including the Arthur Corcoran Award of the American Heart Association, the Ernest Starling Award of the American Physiological Society, the Franz Gross Award of the German Hypertension League, the Award of the Helmut and Ruth Lingen Foundation (Cologne), as well as the Björn Folkow Prize of the European Society for Hypertension. In 2002 he was elected as a member of the oldest Academy of Natural Sciences in Germany, the Leopoldina.
Barbara Bachtler
Press and Public Affairs
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