Gottlieb C. Friesinger II

Gottlieb C. Friesinger, II

NASHVILLE, TN: Gottlieb C. Friesinger II, 83, died on July 28 in Nashville, Tennessee. He was professor of cardiology, emeritus, at Vanderbilt University.

He was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1929, the son of Herman Christian and Ruth Friesinger.

He attended Muskingum College, and got his medical training at Johns Hopkins University. He was Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha. Except for two years when he served as the regimental surgeon for the Fifth Marines, he remained at Johns Hopkins until moving to Vanderbilt in 1971 to become the first director of the Division of Cardiology there. At both Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt, he held endowed chairs. He was an inspiring teacher and mentor, and in 2000, former trainees formed the Friesinger Society and endowed a chair at Vanderbilt in his honor.

His extensive research in, among other topics, coronary arteriography and the development of nuclear medicine techniques, was funded primarily through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1957, he was the first to successfully use the Kouwenhover defibrillator. In his last decade, he focused on cardiovascular manifestations in the elderly, His work resulted in more than a hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals, more than twenty-five chapters in textbooks, and the editing of two books.

He was a consultant to a number of national organizations, and he was on the editorial board of both The Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation. For 21 years, he served on the Board of Trustees at the Johns Hopkins University, with a special commitment to work at the Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. He was a visiting professor at many academic medical centers in the United States and Western Europe. At the time of his death, he was finishing a book on the long-term connections between Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt. In spite of all his impressive accomplishments, what mattered the most to him professionally was being "an old-fashioned doctor," the kind who spent time with patients and understood them.

He was married to the former Janet Anderson Moorehead for 60 years and they had four children: Gretchen Friesinger Denison, Kristin Friesinger Wright, G. Christian Friesinger III, and Alison Friesinger; there are six grandchildren, Tom Christian Denison, Louisa Campbell Denison, Steven Anderson Wright, Rachel Elizabeth Wright, Thomas Dietrich Hill, and Frederica Van Horne Hill; he is also survived by two sisters, Henrietta Hurst, of Zanesville, and June Mock, of Newark, Ohio.