William Stewart Hillis

Stewart Hillis had been actively involved in the preparation for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He was diagnosed as having mesothelioma in May and continued to work till mid-June. He died two days before the opening ceremony.

Stewart was born in Clydebank, the son of a foreman at John Brown’s shipyard, two years after the town was devastated in the Blitz during the second world war. He was educated in Clydebank and at Glasgow University.

During his early postgraduate training with Gavin Shaw, he became interested in cardiology and in 1971 was appointed registrar in the University of Glasgow’s cardiology department with Professor T D V Lawrie. His career progressed rapidly. He showed considerable talent in invasive investigations, and that became a distinguishing feature of his career. After spending a year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, he was appointed consultant cardiologist to Glasgow’s Stobhill Hospital in 1977. It was there that he began pivotal studies in relation to intracoronary and intravenous thrombolysis. He converted the back area of the critical care unit into a coronary angiographic facility and set up a 24/7 service that allowed assessment of artery …