Heart pioneer Prof Frank Pantridge has died aged 88, it was announced yesterday.
The Northern Ireland-born professor, who worked at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, was best known for the invention in 1965 of the portable defibrillator, which has saved the lives of countless cardiac patients.
He also pioneered the first specialist cardiac care unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1966. Such units have since become commonplace and have dramatically improved the survival chances of heart attack patients.
Dr Denis Boyle, who trained and worked with Prof Pantridge, said he was a giant of a man who was responsible for the saving of many, many lives.
"He was a remarkable man. He was the giant on whose shoulders many of us have stood since then. His life should be celebrated," he said.
Prof Pantridge was also a decorated war hero, and a survivor of Japanese atrocities during the second World War. As a 25-year-old lieutenant he was posted to Singapore as a medical orderly in 1940. In the battle before Singapore fell he won an immediate award of a Military Cross. He was taken prisoner and was part of the doomed F Force that endured a 1,200 mile rail journey and then a 186-mile march through thick jungle to work on the Siam-Burma "death railway". - (PA)