Professor Peter Thompson graduated from Medicine and did his postgraduate degree in Medicine at the University of Western Australia (UWA). He trained in cardiology at Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University in Boston. Professor Thompson was skilled in project management and team management, assisted by his completion of MBA qualifications in 2000. At Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital he was Director of the Coronary Care Unit from 1975 to 2005, Head of Cardiovascular Medicine from 1995 to 2005 and Director of Research from 2005 to 2015. He was most recently Consultant Cardiologist and Head of the Heart Research Institute at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UWA. He was Deputy Director of the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research until 2023.

In addition to his leadership roles at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and UWA, Prof Thompson held a range of leadership roles in Australian and Asian cardiology and medicine, including President Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, Deputy President Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology, President Australian Medical Association WA Branch, Chair Heart Attack Committee and Board Member, National Heart Foundation, Asian Region Editor for European Heart Journal. He was a member of the three-person organising committee for the World Congress of Cardiology, Sydney 2000, Chair of the Scientific Programme for the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand Meeting Perth 2005, and was the co-Chair of the Scientific Programme for its 2011 meeting.

Professor Thompson had extensive experience in the training and mentoring of young cardiologists and clinical researchers. He sat on the editorial board of four cardiology journals. He published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and authored over 270 research articles, reviews, book chapters and editorials. In addition to his involvement in clinical cardiovascular research, he maintained an active private cardiology practice with daily involvement in the management of patients primarily with cardiac arrhythmias and coronary heart disease. Prof Thompson was the editor of the Coronary Care Manual (Elsevier) which in its 1st Edition became a standard textbook of Coronary Care and has recently been re-published in its 2nd Edition.

His research interests were in cardiology clinical trials and atherosclerotic heart disease. He was involved in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials for over 30 years and had extensive experience in the design and management of significant clinical trials. He lead a busy clinical trials group in the Western Australian Heart Research Institute, and was Principal Investigator for the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital site for over 130 trials. He received over $10 million in nationally competitive research grants and over $5 million in industry research grants.

Prof Thompson had extensive experience with the design and management of large community studies, and collaborated with the cardiovascular epidemiology group in the UWA School of Population Health over 30 years in monitoring trends in CHD, treatment and procedures using the WA linked data bases. He was joint co-ordinator of the Perth MONICA Centre and continued the follow up of the large cohort from the original study which has recently reported its long term follow-up, showing benefit of evidence-based medical treatments. He had significant involvement in community studies of Aboriginal cardiovascular health as chief investigator of a project surveying the cardiovascular health of the Perth urban Aboriginal population. He had extensive involvement over 30 years in the National Heart Foundation, and his research has been the basis for national education campaigns on the need for early action on heart attack.

In 1999 he was awarded the President’s Award for his contributions to the National Heart Foundation. From 2006 to 2011 he was awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Clinical Fellowship. In 2015 he and colleagues were awarded the Marshall and Warren Award for the most highly innovative and potentially transformative grant from among all the NHMRC grant applications for that year. In 2015 he was also awarded the Minister for Health Award for Excellence in Healthcare.

Peter was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in The Queen’s Birthday 1998 Honours List for services to medicine, particularly in the field of Cardiology and coronary care, to the Australian Medical Association and to the National Heart Foundation.