Hultgren, Herbert N.

An American cardiologist and mountain climber, Herbert N. Hultgren was born on August 29, 1917, in Santa Rosa, California. He received his BA from Stanford University in 1939 and graduated from the Stanford School of Medicine in 1943. After service in the U.S. Army Medical Corps (1944-1946), Hultgren joined the Stanford School of Medicine faculty and eventually served as chief of the Cardiology Division. While on sabbatical in 1959, he visited the Chulec General Hospital in Peru and studied cases of high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) which he later described in the Stanford Medical Journal. Hultgren continued his interest in HAPE and high altitude medicine and published a textbook entitled High Altitude Medicine in 1997. He died in October 1997.

Biography

Herbert Nils Hultgren was born on August 29, 1917, in Santa Rosa, California. He attended Santa Rosa Junior College and then Stanford University where he graduated in 1939. Hultgren attended the Stanford School of Medicine and graduated in 1943. He served in the U.S. Army in Europe between 1944 and 1945 where he observed starved prisoners from German concentration camps. Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1948, he completed residencies in internal medicine and pathology at Stanford. He attained the rank of professor at Stanford School of Medicine and served as chief of the Cardiology Division at Stanford Medical School and later at the Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California. Hultgren designed and established the first cardiac catheterization laboratory in Northern California.

In 1959, Hultgren and his colleague, Dr, Warren Spickard, traveled to Peru and visited the Chulec General Hospital where they encountered high altitude pulmonary edema, known locally as edema of the lungs in newcomers. They reviewed the reports on 41 cases and presented the data in the Stanford Medical Bulletin.

In 1990, Hultgren received the prestigious Albion W. Hewlett Award for excellence in patient care, teaching, and research by his fellow Stanford University faculty members. He served as chairman of the Sub-specialty Board on Cardiovascular Disease of the American Board of Internal Medicine, President of the Association of University Cardiologists, President of the Western Association of Physicians, and was a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation.

After his retirement, he continued part-time teaching and lecturing until his death in October 1997.