Garret FitzGerald, MD, chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Director of the Institute for Translational Medicine & Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is among the 44 newly elected Fellows and eight newly elected Foreign Members to the Royal Society.

"Science impacts on most aspects of modern life, improving our understanding of the world and playing an increasing role as we grapple with problems such as feeding a growing global population and keeping an aging population healthy. These scientists who have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society are among the world's finest. They follow in the footsteps of luminaries such as Newton, Darwin and Einstein and I am delighted to welcome them into our ranks," noted Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society.

FitzGerald, also professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and the McNeil Professor in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, takes an integrative approach to elucidating the mechanisms of drug action. He was the first to describe the dose-dependent suppression by aspirin of thromboxane and prostacyclin in humans and animal models. This body of research contributed substantially to the development of low-dose aspirin as a preventive approach to heart disease. His group was the first to predict and then explain mechanistically the cardiovascular hazard from NSAIDs. His team was also the first to discover a molecular clock in the cardiovascular system, which has contributed substantially to the understanding of the importance of peripheral clocks in the regulation of cardiovascular and metabolic function.

"I am deeply honored by this recognition of the efforts and accomplishments of those with whom I have been privileged to work," said FitzGerald.

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