Association of University Cardiologists

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Jay Michael Sullivan, M.D.

1936 - 1999

Jay Michael Sullivan was a gentleman and a scholar. These have been the words used by so many who knew this scientist, teacher, superb clinician, husband, father, and friend when learning of his untimely death. Jay Sullivan died on February 22, 1999, at only 62 years of age, less than two months after experiencing the first manifestations of carcinoma of the pancreas.

Jay Sullivan was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, and grew up in Miami, Florida. He received his bachelor and medical degrees from Georgetown University, where he was valedictorian of his medical school class, graduating in 1962. He then went to Boston, near his birthplace, and spent 12 years at Harvard Medical School and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, where he did his internship and residency in medicine and was Chief Resident in Medicine and a Cardiology fellow. He also had a two-year preceptorship in biological chemistry. In 1970, he joined the Harvard faculty for four years as an Assistant Professor of Medicine. During this time, he was also Director of the Hypertension Unit at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and in 1973–74, he was Director of Medical Services at the Boston Hospital for Women.

In 1974, Jay was recruited to the University of Tennessee, Memphis, as Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases. He also assumed the position of Director of the Cardiology Fellowship Program, and he maintained these responsibilities until his death. He continued his interests in factors that determined the onset of hypertension. In the area of salt-sensitive hypertension, he made some of the fundamental observations on how age, ethnicity, and other factors determined whether blood pressure in an individual would be responsive to environmental influences. Among his many other interests and projects over the years, he continued to study and to write extensively on sodium-sensitive hypertension, hoping to fulfill his dream of detecting those early, elusive factors that are at the underpinnings of essential hypertension. He was considered one of the top experts in the field of salt sensitivity and particularly described that sodium-sensitive individuals respond to high sodium intake with either vasoconstriction or inadequate vasodilatation.

Although he continued his work on salt sensitivity and hypertension, in more recent years he also became internationally known as an authority in the management of cardiac disease in women, especially the relationship between postmenopausal estrogen use and cardiovascular disease. He has also trained approximately 90 Cardiology fellows and taught and was respected by a generation of medical students and residents. Jay was very active for over 20 years in the American Heart Association and his service included President of the Memphis and Tennessee Chapters, chairman of numerous local and state committees, and participant on several committees of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research. His community service and professional accomplishments are far more extensive than what can be mentioned in this forum, but he always had the energy and willingness to serve others.

Jay was one of the kindest, most genteel, warm, and understanding persons and physicians we have known. He was a physician's physician. His place in medicine and with his family is clearly established. Jay Sullivan represented what is the very best in our profession and his death is a loss to the field of hypertension.

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