Edward L. Pritchett  bio

Ed Pritchett and his family moved to their Bexley home at 244 South Ardmore Road in September, 1945 when Ed was 6 months old.  From this location Ed was able to walk ½ block to school for kindergarten through 12^th grade. During these years Ed was lucky to have many of Bexley’s great teachers, including John Schacht for 3 years of high school mathematics. His senior year Ed was president of the student council and salutatorian of his graduating class (1963). He went from Bexley to Princeton University where he majored in mathematics and graduated in 1967.  He then returned to Columbus and went to medical school at The Ohio State University, graduating in 1971. He received additional training in general surgery (University of California, Los Angeles) and internal medicine (University Hospital, Columbus) before joining the cardiology division at Duke University Medical Center (Durham, North Carolina), where Andrew G. Wallace (Bexley ’53) was the division chief.

Ed remained at Duke as a faculty member until he retired in 2001. At the time of his retirement Ed was Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Cardiology and Clinical Pharmacology and Chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology. Ed’s research related to disorders of the heart’s conduction system, and he was author or coauthor of more than 150 scientific manuscripts, book chapters and review articles. As director of the cardiology training program at Duke, Ed was responsible for launching the careers of dozens of academic cardiologists, many of whom serve as division chiefs today. He also served on scientific advisory panels of the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the American Heart Association. He has remained active as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies since his retirement.

Ed’s family members who are Bexley graduates include his wife Caroline Smith Pritchett ’64 (whom he married in September 2005), his brother Clark Pritchett ’61, and his cousin Dick Hammond ’63; Ed and Caroline live in Durham, North Carolina. Ed has 4 children. A son Hartwell and daughter Leslie are recent college graduates, and both work for NASCAR race teams in North Carolina. His twin son (Poston) and daughter (Elizabeth) attend the University of Texas and the University of Alabama, respectively.

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