In Memoriam: Colin Caro 1925–2022

Abstract

Picture credit: Layton Thompson/Imperial College LondonWe write in remembrance of Colin Gerald Caro, one of the founders of bioengineering, a pioneer in the study of arterial fluid mechanics, an originator of the low-shear-stress theory of atherosclerosis, a scientist with outstanding insight and foresight, and a mentor to researchers around the world.Colin was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1925. He read medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, graduating in 1950 after interruptions for service in the South African Navy (he assisted the surgeon aboard the frigate HMSAS Swale) and a degree in physiology. There followed a string of positions characteristic of the peripatetic life of a young physician-scientist—Baragwanath and Addington hospitals in South Africa, Canadian Red Cross and the Hammersmith hospitals in the UK, the State University of New York and the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S.—before he was appointed Lecturer at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London, in 1960.