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William Halpern
October 27, 1923 - July 29, 2008
Dr. William Halpern died on July 29, 2008, at the age of 84, after a brief
struggle with pancreatic cancer.
After graduating from City College of New York in 1944, Bill served two
years in the U.S. Navy as an electronic technician, and then taught at
Rutgers University while receiving his M.Sc. in electrical engineering. He
entered the industrial sphere in 1948 where, among other projects, he worked
on the development of airborne submarine detectors and the first gyroscope
permitting flights over the polar route.
In 1953, he turned his interests to the area of health-related research
by establishing a company that developed several novel instruments for
remote measurement of blood pressure, and the early detection of breast
cancer. After selling his company in 1960, Bill joined Beckman Instruments
in Palo Alto, CA as Chief Applications Engineer. Pursuing his love of
physiology, Bill received an M.S. degree from Stanford in 1966 under the
guidance of Dr. Eugene Yates. He often spoke of this as a turning point in
his life, as it fused his love of engineering with physiology.
Bill continued his academic pursuits at the University of Vermont, where
he met Dr. Norman Alpert and received a Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics
in 1969. Bill spent the next 31 years on the faculty, teaching and training
many students and postdoctoral associates as he ascended to the rank of full
Professor. His research was continually funded by numerous grants from the
National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association,
and the Halpern laboratory was a spawning ground for a number of successful
scientists. Bill served on several NIH Study Sections, and on the editorial
board of prestigious journals such as Circulation Research (1983-1990),
Hypertension (1981-1983), and Blood Vessels (1980-1991; now, the
Journal of Vascular Research). In 1997, Bill was inducted into the
Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering.
Bill Halpern was an inventor, and a pioneer of in vitro vascular
methodology. He is recognized internationally for his many contributions to
the field of scientific instrumentation, and resistance artery biology in
health and disease. During a year spent in Dr. Halpern’s laboratory as
Visiting Professor, Dr. Michael Mulvany and Bill designed and built a small
artery isometric wire myograph (first described in Nature, 1976).
Several years later, with the help of other colleagues at the University of
Vermont, Bill developed a state-of-the-art small artery pressure-perfusion
video system (1984) that is used widely today to evaluate the behavior of
isolated arteries and veins.
This invention coincided with the advent of the ‘endothelial era’ and, by
virtue of its design, the pressure arteriograph allowed the exploration of
endothelial-smooth muscle interactions within the vascular wall. Of
particular note is Bill’s work in the field of arterial mechanostransduction,
which established myogenic behavior as a primary mechanism for resistance
artery control and defined how it was altered by hypertension.
Bill lectured widely on his scientific investigations in the United
States, as well as in Australia, Asia and Europe and, after retiring from
the University of Vermont in 1990, founded Living Systems Instrumentation
(LSI), a company whose theme is “Innovations in vascular research”,
where he continued to work until only a few weeks before his death.
Although he was President and CEO, Bill could often be found quietly
tinkering in the laboratory – devising and testing new instruments – with a
pipe and black coffee in hand. LSI is a highly successful company, and its
products can be found in scientific laboratories worldwide, with citations
in over 600 published scientific papers.
As a person, Bill was a gentle, thoughtful man with a unique sense of
humor and an observant eye. He reveled in life’s idiosyncrasies and
ironies, loved to dance, and was a good friend to many.
Dr. William Halpern is survived by his beloved wife, novelist Shelby
Hearon, and his two sons – Russ and Alex - and their families.
With his passing, the world has lost an original thinker, an outstanding
scientist, and a fine man.
George Osol, Ph.D.
August 2008
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