American College of Cardiology Past President Robert Frye, MD, has died at age 94 after a career spanning more than 70 years in medicine, the ACC announced Aug. 7.
Dr. Frye served as ACC president from 1991 to 1992 and spent more than 60 years practicing and teaching cardiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Dr. Frye earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1956 and trained in residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He went on to become the first physician research fellow and clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health, recruited by Eugene Braunwald, MD, MACC.
Within the ACC, Dr. Frye chaired the Scientific Session Program Committee, served on the Nominating Committee in the 1980s and participated in the Bethesda Conferences in the early 1990s. The college awarded him its Distinguished Fellowship Award in 1995. His research contributed to physiological studies of Starling’s law of the heart and advanced understanding of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
“Dr. Frye’s legacy lives on through the discoveries he advanced, the physicians he mentored and the profession he helped lead,” said ACC President Roxana Mehran, MD, FACC. ACC Past President David R. Holmes Jr., MD, MACC, called him a “giant” who brought “wonderous humility and honesty” to every relationship.
Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, MACC, who worked alongside Dr. Frye as the first Braunwald fellow at the NIH, said Dr. Frye “helped lay the foundation for a generation of clinical discovery that transformed” cardiovascular medicine.
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