Burt B. Hamrell, M.D., Ph.D.
Burt Hamrell is an emeritus faculty member of the University of Vermont's Department of Molecular
Physiology and Biophysics, where he has spent almost 30 years involved in research on heart muscle
and the changes that occur with hypertrophy and endocarditis. In addition to publishing the results
of his research, he has served on various research committees of the American Heart Association and
the National Institutes of Health. In a 1979 to 1980 sabbatical, he studied muscle physiology at the
Physiological Institute of University College, London as a Fogarty International Fellow. A graduate of
the University of Illinois College of Medicine, he was a resident in internal medicine and a cardiology
fellow at the University of Illinois Research and Educational Hospitals. From there he entered the U.S.
Public Health Service and was assigned to the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene at the University of
Minnesota, where he studied the relationship of physical exercise with heart disease under the direction
of Ancel Keys, Henry Taylor, and Henry Blackburn. He then continued on to the University of Vermont.
During his tenure at Vermont, Dr. Hamrell was the long-time director of the physiology course, and during
retirement, he remains actively involved in teaching. He currently participates in the Vermont Integrated
Curriculum as part of a faculty team that teaches second-year medical students, and he also teaches in
the graduate physiology course of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics.