Professor John H. Coote 1936–2017. Cardiovascular physiologist and mountaineer

John Coote was Bowman Professor of Physiology in autonomic neuroscience and cardiovascular control at the University of Birmingham until his retirement, and also a keen mountaineer (Fig. 1). In 1969 after scaling the Bolivar Peak, one of the highest mountains in Venezuela, he lay badly injured on the snow-swept peak for 10 h after his rope snapped minutes into the descent. This also resulted in the death of his two Venezuelan climbing companions who rested beside him. He was eventually rescued and went on to partake in many more expeditions to Nepal and Peru with the Birmingham Medical Research Expeditionary Society, and later with colleagues at Oxford where he made several major discoveries on processes underlying acclimatisation. As a medical student at the Royal Free Hospital in 1954, he registered as a pacifist and became a Conscientious Objector, and was sentenced to 3 years agricultural and hospital work in lieu of National Service. He returned to medical school but never completed his training. Instead physiology enthralled him, following an intercalated degree before completing his PhD in 1964. Here he developed an interest in the neural control of the circulation that would lead him to become one of the great cardiovascular autonomic neurophysiologists of his generation. In 1967 he joined Sidney Hilton's department at Birmingham as a lecturer. During his time there Birmingham became a powerhouse in autonomic neuroscience and trained several generations of leading scientists: K. M. Spyer, J. M. Marshall, R. McAllen, T. A. Lovick, D. Jordan, M. P. Gilbey J. R. F. Paton and A. Ng – to whose acclaim he undoubtedly contributed. Coote published many seminal studies, although he will be widely remembered for his classic paper in The Journal of Physiology in 1971, which has been cited nearly 500 times since publication. Together with Perez-Gonzalez and Hilton he conclusively established the neurophysiological basis of the muscle pressor reflex. In elegant experiments they demonstrated that cutting the dorsal root from the cat gastrocnemius muscle abolished the increase in blood pressure that had been caused by ventral root-induced muscle stimulation (Coote et al. 1971). A year later in Oxford, J. M. Mitchell and D. I. McCloskey described the fibres involved in the reflex – a paper that would become a citation classic in The Journal of Physiology. Mitchell returned to Dallas, where he fully exploited these observations and had an outstanding career. Coote's paper laid the foundation for this work, although it never received the same acclaim and citations in America (McCloskey & Mitchell, 1972). During his career at Birmingham, Coote developed a thriving department and went on to write leading monographs on cardiovascular control, in particular the role of the vagus nerve during exercise. His later work on NO and the vagus with Andre Ng featured in The Journal of Physiology where they showed the anti-arrhythmic effect of vagal activation was facilitated by NO-dependent processes (Brack et al. 2007). He was awarded the prestigious Carl Ludwig distinguished lectureship from the American Physiological Society and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. An active member of The Physiological Society, he served as Chairman of the Editorial Board of Experimental Physiology and turned that journal around. His contribution to the British Heart Foundation was also significant, where he chaired their project grants committee for many years. His distinction was later recognised with honorary membership/fellowship of The Physiological Society and the British Pharmacological Society. John Haven Coote was born in 1936, the son of a minister in the free church. With his mother and two sisters he was evacuated to Wales and Somerset during the War. He attended Enfield Grammar School and then the University of London to read medicine and physiology. He completed his PhD with Professor C. B. Downman at the Royal Free before moving to Birmingham where he met his wife-to-be, Susan Hylton, on a blind date. It was love at first sight and 2 months later they got engaged. John then went away for 6 months climbing and researching whilst Sue continued her career as senior registrar, then becoming a consultant in anaesthetics. Married in 1974, they had a very successful marriage and produced three talented children who went onto have careers in dentistry, aerospace engineering and banking. John curtailed his dangerous adventures after the children were born, although he continued travelling and working abroad, combining his passion for high altitude adventures with his work in physiology. On retiring from the Bowman Chair in 2003 he became Emeritus Professor and worked as a Visiting Professor at Leicester, where he continued to publish leading articles right up to his sudden and unexpected death. John Coote was a much respected and well-liked colleague to many scientists around the world. His self-effacing demeanour endeared him to all. He is survived by his wife, Sue, and their three children, Edward, Rachel and Naomi, and four grandchildren.