Richard Popp to Receive Hewlett Award


Richard Popp, MD

Richard Popp, MD (professor of medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine, emeritus) surprised himself back in 1967 when he began a fellowship in invasive cardiology at Indiana University and found himself attracted to echocardiography. Working with Harvey Feigenbaum, then the best-known echocardiographer in the United States, Popp began a career that flourished alongside the imaging modality that interested him. From M-mode to two-dimensional and three-dimensional imaging of the heart’s structures, Popp and his colleagues transformed ultrasound of the heart by learning to measure volumes, ejection fraction, and pressure gradients.

Over the years, Popp learned a great deal about biomedical engineering from industry engineers, working with them to improve ultrasound equipment. Today’s handheld machines are one current evolutionary product of that career trajectory.

Speaking about the Hewlett Award this week, Dr. Popp had this to say: “It is an especially meaningful award for me. It has special meaning because when I was Vice Chair of medicine under Dr. Ken Melmon, he originated this award. He decided that since the School was relatively young after it came down from San Francisco, it didn’t have a lot of tradition and it needed some. And I had come from Hopkins where it was all about tradition. I thought it was excellent that he started the award.  It’s been extremely honoring to all of the people who’ve received it over these past twenty-some years as the group has gotten bigger and bigger. The fact that I’m becoming part of that group is very humbling.”

On Wednesday, June 28, 2017, Richard Popp will receive the prestigious Albion Walter Hewlett Award, which honors an “exceptional physician with ties to Stanford.” The title of his Hewlett Award Lecture at 8:00am will be “Understanding the Heart From the Outside-In.”