John Parsons Shillingford

John Parsons Shillingford (April 15, 1914 – September 16, 1999) was a British physician and cardiologist, known as a pioneer of the introduction of coronary care units in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.

Early life
Shillingford was born in London, England on April 15, 1914. He attended Bishop's Stortford College. He then studied at the London Hospital Medical School.

At the beginning of World War II, he won a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship to Harvard Medical School and graduated with an MD in 1943. He held medical residency appointments at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland and at Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, New York.

Shillingford qualified for Membership of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians in 1945. He graduated with a MB BS from the London Hospital Medical School.in 1945 and an MD in 1948.

Career
After the war, Shillingford worked at the London Hospital until 1950. In 1950, John McMichael recruited Shillingford to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in Hammersmith. Shillingford's research team studied the narrowing of the arteries that occurs with aging. He promoted engineering and biophysics in cardiovascular research.

He headed the Medical Research Council's cardiovascular unit, and his engineering interests and skills led to several diagnostic innovations. His major contributions were in the study and care of patients in the acute stages of heart attack, at a time when little was offered beyond pain relief. In the 1960s, he realized that research into heart disease was underfunded and, together with McMichael, supported the recently formed British Heart Foundation. He became the chair of angiocardiography at the University of London in 1969.

He published over 400 articles that form the basis of much of the current understanding of heart disease.

Personal life
He married Doris Margaret "Jill" Franklin in 1947 in Brentford, Middlesex. They had two sons and a daughter. He died in 1999.

Awards and honours

 * 1960 – Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
 * 1966 – Fellow of the American College of Cardiology
 * 1968 – President of the Section of Experimental Medicine, Annual Meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine
 * 1972 – Lumleian Lecturer on Management of Acute Myocardial Infarction over the Last Ten Years
 * 1974 – Honorary Fellow of the American College of Physicians
 * 1988 – Commander of the Order of the British Empire