John R. Vane

John R. Vane married Elizabeth Daphne Page in 1948 while he was in Oxford He has two daughters, Nicola and Miranda from this marriage.

John R. Vane died on November 19, 2004 at the ‘Princess Royal Hospital, Kent’ due to pneumonia and complications of hip and leg fractures sustained in May in the same year.

John R. Vane was born in Tardebigg, Worcestershire, England on March 29, 1927. His father, Maurice Vane was a Jewish Russian immigrant, and his mother was Frances Vane who was the daughter of a Worcestershire farmer.

He was the youngest of the three Vane siblings and had an elder sister and an elder brother.

He lived in a Birmingham suburb and attended the local state school there from the age of five.

He then joined the ‘King Edward VI High School’ in Edgbaston in Birmingham which had to be shifted to a site beside the Repton School in the countryside due to the World War II.

After finishing high school with pure science subjects he joined the ‘University of Birmingham’ in 1944 where he studied chemistry. He soon lost interest in chemistry as there was nothing much to experiment on during his university years.

In 1953 he moved with his family to Newhaven, Connecticut, United States, to join the ‘Department of Pharmacology’ at the ‘Yale University’ as an ‘Assistant Professor of Pharmacology’ at the invitation of the then Chairman Dr. Arnold Welch.

After staying at the ‘Yale University’ for 2 years, he returned to the UK and joined the ‘Institute of Basic Medical Sciences’ attached to the ‘Royal College of Surgeons of England’ under the ‘University of London’. He started to work there with Professor W. D. M. Paton.

While there, he taught only graduate students and had plenty of time to carry on with his research work. During the 18 years he was with this institute, he became a Senior Lecturer in 1955, a Reader in 1961 and finally a ‘Professor of Experimental Pharmacology’ in 1966.

Under the Chairmanship of Professor G. V. R. Born, an acquaintance from Oxford days, he worked with an active group of researchers and scientist at the department and developed the ‘cascade super-fusion bioassay technique’. This was used to measure instantly and dynamically the ‘vasoactive hormones’ that were released in the blood or in the ‘perfusion fluid’ of organs.

During the mid-1960s he focused his experiments on ‘prostaglandins’ and in 1971 he was able to establish a link between ‘aspirin’ and ‘prostaglandins’.

His book ‘Metabolic Functions of the Lung’ with Y. S. Bakhle was published in 1977.

The book ‘Prostacyclin’ co-authored with Sune K. Bergstrom was published in 1979.

His third book ‘Aspirin and other salicylates’ co-authored with Regina M. Botting came out in 1992.