Dr. Angeliki "Lily" Georgopoulos, passed away on December 14, 2021, age 79. She died at her home in Minneapolis unexpectedly, instantly, and peacefully, of cardiac arrest. She was a loving and beloved mother, grandmother, wife, and lifelong companion to her husband, daughters, and grandchildren. She will be sorely missed and will be remembered forever, fondly and tenderly.
Lily was born and grew up in Athens, Greece, daughter of a chemist mother and a physician father. She attended medical school in Athens where she obtained her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. She specialized in endocrinology with a focus on diabetes, atherosclerosis, and their intersection, as well as on women's health. She was devoted to these fields for many years both in her clinical practice (1969-2016) and clinical and laboratory research (1972-2016). She spent her early years (1976-1991) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she rose to Associate Professor of Medicine. In 1991, she moved to Minnesota as Staff at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she was promoted to Full Professor of Medicine in 2001. She retired in 2016.
With respect to clinical practice in diabetes, Lily was one of the first in the country to apply the insulin pump treatment to diabetes patients in the late 1970s, and to use continuous glucose monitoring in unstable diabetes and the detection of reactive hypoglycemia. At Johns Hopkins, she served as Director of the Diabetic Management Clinic and Director of the Adult External Insulin Pump Program of the Johns Hopkins Hospital; Director of the Diabetes Visual Impairment Program (DVIP) of the State of Maryland; and Associate Director of the Diabetes Center of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. At the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, she served as Director of the Insulin Pump Program (1996-2016).
With respect to clinical practice in lipids and atherosclerosis, Lily was Director of the Coronary Prevention Trial (CPT) at Johns Hopkins (1981-1988), the clinical trial that demonstrated the effect of statins in lowering blood cholesterol and their benefit in reducing coronary heart disease. She coauthored the two landmark papers from this trial ("The Lipid Research Clinic Coronary Prevention Trial results. I. Reduction in incidence of coronary heart disease," Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA] 251:361-64, 1984"; and "The Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Prevention Trial results. II. The relationship of reduction in incidence of coronary heart disease to cholesterol lowering," Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA] 251: 365-74, 1984). At the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, she established and directed the Lipid Clinic (1991-2016).
With respect to women's health, Lily served as Director of the Women's Comprehensive Health Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center (1996-2012) where she spearheaded the delivery of integrated, multidisciplinary health services to women veterans. In 2010, having been impressed by the excellent cognitive status of many of the women veterans visiting the Center, she thought it important to study the brain in healthy aging. This idea led to the establishment of the Women's Healthy Brain Project at the Brain Sciences Center of the Minneapolis VA Medical center, one of the world's first comprehensive, multimodal, and integrative assessment of brain status as it relates to cognition, language, and genetics across the lifespan. The project continues to thrive (brain.umn.edu).
With respect to research, Lily's passion was the confluence of diabetes and atherosclerosis, stemming from the fact that coronary artery disease is more frequent in diabetic patients. She brought to focus the important role of postprandial lipids, especially triglycerides, in atherosclerosis and their especially detrimental role in diabetes. She pursued this research since the early 1980s at the clinical, laboratory, and drug testing levels with grants from various government and private funding agencies, and obtained a patent for insulin delivery by inhalation through the nose. Lily gave many invited lectures on her research worldwide.
At work, Lily was an outstanding and compassionate physician to her patients and a strong, unfailing supporter of her staff. At home, she was a full presence, with unlimited energy, courage, love, determination, encouragement, and a deeply generous heart. She enjoyed and was a passionate supporter of visual and performing arts. Remarkably, her last paper was on aesthetics, coauthored only by her husband: Georgopoulos A & Georgopoulos A: The Beautiful Brain and the influence of Santiago Ramón y Cajal on Medicine. Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA] 318:502-504, 2017.
Lily lived her life fully, enriching and inspiring the lives around her. What a fantastic journey! She is survived by her husband, Apostolos, her two daughters (Elma and Areti), and her four grandchildren (Phineas, Lyra, Zeina and Selena), who celebrate her life lovingly.