John Martin, FESC, who was awarded one of three ESC Gold Medals at this year's Opening Ceremony, sees himself above all as a European, noting that his association with the ESC has given him the platform to reach out to a wider international audience with his "Heart Plan for Europe", an initiative ironically inspired at home at his kitchen table. "I do believe that the ESC is the most dynamic professional society in Europe," says Martin, a former vice-president of the ESC. "It has analysed the extent of the cardiovascular problem and provided governments with solutions to it."
Several years down the line, with "enormous support" from the ESC and a number of European health ministers, Martin has now developed a "tool box" to help each country design its own bespoke prevention package for heart health. His European credentials include studying for a first degree in philosophy at a Spanish University, marriage to a French woman (though he is now divorced), and speaking an extraordinary number of languages for a scientific Brit. He is fluent in Spanish and French, reasonable in Danish and reads Latin.
The motivation to study medicine as a mature student came from literature - he was inspired by the novels of Pasternak and A J Cronin. But Martin's imagination was also fired by science, with his interest in cardiovascular medicine coming via an MD in the role of microtubules in platelets. "Platelets are unique to mammals," he explains. "The fact that crocodiles and birds don't have them got me hooked."
Since then Martin, now Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at University College London, has enjoyed an active research career looking at platelets, the vascular protective role of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and nitric oxide. Recently he began a phase III clinical trial delivering stem cells to the area of infarct within four hours of the event occurring.
His realisation that the gene for VEGF could be used therapeutically led him to start his own company, Ark Therapeutics, which is now taking gene therapy for vascular damage through clinical trials. He is amused by the fact that the resulting product, Trinam III, is an anagram of Martin. An understanding of business is vital for the success of science, he says, adding that European universities need to make themselves independent of government finance by learning to exploit their own inventions. Ark Therapeutics is now a public company that employs around 150 people.
Martin's entrepreneurial flare is further characterised by his literary career. When told it would be "commercial suicide" to publish a joint collection of poetry and short stories, Martin launched his own publishing company. The resulting publication - "The Origins of Loneliness" - covers the grand themes of literature, including war, philosophy, love, travel and death. Childlessness is a recurring subject - the stimulus to express himself, he says, came when he lost his father and was divorced in the same month. Poems come easily, jotted down on bits of paper while travelling, but stories take longer. Currently, he is preparing his second book of poems and is about one third of the way into his first novel. Painting is another passion - Martin annually attends the Slade Summer school where he puts together huge canvasses of abstract art. This, unlike his writing, is instant gratification - he can complete a canvass in three minutes. "My trouble throughout life is that I've had too many interests," says Martin, the ultimate renaissance cardiologist of today.