Senate of the Jagiellonian University awarded the title for achievements including research that contributed to defining the rules of treatment of hypertension in the elderly, and for contribution to hypertensiology (branch of medicine that deals with the study of hypertension - PAP). Professor Messerli promoted his own academic achievements as well as achievements of Polish researchers, he was also in the creation at the Jagiellonian University, of a specialist centre specialising in hypertension in the elderly. He was also recognized for his excellence in the transfer of knowledge, erudition and rhetorical skills.

Professor. Jerzy Gąsowski from the Jagiellonian University spoke in laudation about the professor’s ties to Poland. He reminded that in the 1960s Messerli, as a medical student, spent several weeks in Kraków and Warsaw. He started cooperating with the university\'s Geriatric Clinic in Kraków in 1991. He donated echocardiography equipment to the clinic. He also assisted it through the subscription of journals and purchase of books. He organised several months long fellowships in in New Orleans for Polish researchers. The professor participated in scientific meetings in Kraków.

Currently, the cardiologist cooperates with the School of Medicine in English of the Faculty of Medicine, Jagiellonian Univeristy Medical College, he is involved in starting the school’s cooperation with the University of Columbia in New York, and gives lectures to Kraków students.

"He is a great friend of our country and university" - said prof. Gąsowski.

In his speech, Prof. Messerli pointed out that science not only expands human knowledge, it can also mislead. " Clearly, science has its inherent fallacies and often is manipulated and dogmatized. However despite all backwash, science relentlessly provides the evidence that enhances our knowledge and allows mankind to progress and flourish" - he said. He added that despite the advances in science, " we are nowhere near infinite wisdom and hopefully never will be, but perhaps we have succeeded to somewhat confine infinite error".

Franz H. Messerli was born in 1942 in Wahlern in western Switzerland. He is a professor of medicine, prominent cardiologist involved in the study and treatment of hypertension.

After medical studies in Berlin, Vienna and Paris, he worked as a Red Cross doctor in Saigon, and in 1973-1975 in a clinic in Montreal. In the following year he was the director of the Swiss Center of Hypertension. He spent the next 28 years in New Orleans, where he was also hypertension center director. During that time, he gave lectures at Tulane Medical School in New Orleans.

Since 2004, Prof. Messerli is director of the hypertension program at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York. He also works as a professor at Columbia University in New York (Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons).

Prof. Messerli and colleagues have demonstrated harmfulness or efficacy of certain drugs in the treatment of hypertension, proved that excessive pressure drop significantly increases the risk of coronary heart disease in elderly patients, pointed out that sublingual nifedipine (used in the short-term treatment of hypertension) can be dangerous to your health.

Professor. Messerli has authored more than 750 publications in the field of medicine.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

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