Oglesby Paul papers

Oglesby Paul (1916-2007), A.B., 1938, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts; M.D., 1942, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, was an instructor and Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago; Chief of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, and Vice President for Health Sciences at Northwestern University’s Passavant Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Illinois; Dean of Admissions for Harvard Medical School from 1977 to 1982; Professor of Medicine in the Cardiovascular Division of the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, from 1977 to 1986; and Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. A clinical cardiologist, Paul worked on preventative cardiology, correlating changes in diet and behavior with improvements in cardiac outcomes.

Oglesby Paul was born in 1916 in Milton, Massachusetts. He attended Milton Academy, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School. After receiving his medical degree, Paul interned at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, before going on active duty with the United States Navy during World War II. He spent three years with the Navy, largely on the U.S.S. Daly, a destroyer in the Pacific. At the end of the war, Paul returned to Boston and MGH to complete his medical training and work with cardiologist Paul Dudley White (1886-1973). In 1948, Paul moved to Chicago to join the faculty of the University of Illinois. During the 1950s, Paul worked at what became the Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago and served on the clinical faculty of the University of Illinois, becoming a full clinical professor of medicine in 1962. In 1963, he joined the faculty at Northwestern University’s Passavant Memorial Hospital. While at Passavant, Paul combined the positions of Chief of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, and Vice President for Health Sciences. In 1977, Harvard Medical School Dean Daniel C. Tosteson (1925-2009) invited Paul to return to Harvard Medical School as Director of Admissions, a position he held until 1982. Paul also taught in the Cardiovascular Division of the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 1977 until 1986. He retired in the 1990s.

Paul was an active researcher throughout his career, doing work with Paul Dudley White in the 1940s and, during the 1950s, heading a group of twenty-five physicians in the Western Electric Study of lifestyle and cardiac outcomes, the findings of which helped to set standards for “healthy” behaviors. In the 1970s, Paul was the principle investigator of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial, correlating changes in diet and behavior with improvement in cardiac risk. Paul served as president of the American Heart Association in 1960 and, from 1964 until 1967, was chairman of the Subspecialty Board on Cardiovascular Disease. After his retirement, Paul remained active in the Harvard community, assisting with fund-raising for the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, and continuing his work as an active alumni class agent, helping Harvard alumni stay in touch with their alma mater, arranging class reunions, and fund-raising among his classmates. As a historian, Paul authored two books, Take Heart, a biography of cardiologist Paul Dudley White, and The Caring Physician: The Life of Francis W. Peabody, as well as a privately published history of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Leadership: A Short History of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

Paul married Marguerite Black in 1943; she predeceased him in 1979. He later married Jean Lithgow Paul (no relation) in 1981. Paul had two children from his first marriage, Marnie and Rodman; and three stepchildren, James, Douglas, and Patricia. Paul died on 22 December 2007, of a heart attack at the age of ninety-one.