Biography

 Born in Cheshire in the North of England to a physician in the Royal Air Force his early education was in boarding school at Stonyhurst College. He later studied at the University of Grenoble in France where he became fluent in French. His medical education was at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School of the University of London, completing those studies in 1968. During that study he also became highly proficient at computing, a skill which he turned to professional purpose during the remainder of his career and which occupied a substantial portion of his professional effort. He spent 1969-1970 at the National Heart Hospital as a medical officer, being mentored there by Aubrey Leatham and Edgar Sowton. In 1974, at age 29, he achieved consultant status as the then youngest consultant in London, at the National Heart Hospital. Sowton and Ingvar Karlof had investigated cardiac output as a function of atrial contribution and variation of ventricular rate and passed that interest to Rickards. In 1978 he conceived the concept that measurement of the T wave following a paced QRS and the duration of the QT interval might provide an indirect measure of catecholamine levels and consequently the body’s activity state allowing consequent change by the pacemaker in the stimulation rate. Working with engineer, John Norman and then with Hilbert Thalen and the manufacturer Vitatron, a QT sensing rate modulated pacemaker was eventually developed, the first such commercially available. This concept is now, in one formulation or another almost universally available in pacemakers. The concept was also the basis of the first measure of ventricular capture by sensing the T wave, allowing automatic determination of whether a stimulus had produced a ventricular response. During the late seventies he began a registration effort for all pacemaker patients. Manufacturers were induced to provide forms with each pulse generator to be registered and he and Thalen, beginning in 1977 extended the registration concept to Western and then Eastern Europe, providing a database of all pacemakers implanted in Europe. In addition to the central database the patient was provided with a portable "passport" in h/er national language and English so that travel was possible throughout Europe, carrying data concerning device implantation and function. He later introduced another rate modulation concept which has become a commercial product.

Rickards contributed widely in many fields of cardiology including being the first to perform a coronary angioplasty in the UK and the first to implant a coronary stent. He has researched and participated in the development of lasers, stents, balloons and angioscopes. He has written widely on cardiologic topics including coronary artery disease, myocardial function, mitral and aortic valve disease, congenital cardiac disease, image and wave form processing and other topics. In 1987 he was Co-Founder of the CABRI project (Coronary Angioplasty vs. Bypass Revascularization Investigation) a major European trial of the management of coronary artery disease by angioplasty or surgery as alternative techniques. He has been widely involved in UK governmental medical committees and is the recipient of many governmental and private grants for the support of his research and development efforts. He was widely sought after in national, European and North American professional organizations.

He died suddenly and unexpectedly at home on May 28, 2004.

- Seymour Furman, M.D.