Dr Eric Muirhead was chosen to receive the 1994 Volhard Award of the International Society of Hypertension just prior to his unexpected death in 1994. This Award was to be the culmination of his scientific career spanning nearly 40 years of research, which revealed the existence of circulating renal antihypertensive lipids and a renohepatic hormonal axis for the control of arterial pressure. Dr Muirhead was trained as a pathologist and his early career was influenced by Dr Arthur Grollman, who challenged the conventional wisdom of the time that hypertension was caused by a circulating vasoconstrictor substance by hypothesizing the existence of a renal antihypertensive depressor substance, the absence of which would raise blood pressure. This was not then nor is it yet a popular view, and it became less so with the discovery of the renin-angiotensin system in the 1950s. Eric Muirhead accepted the challenge of exploring and advancing the concept of a renal antihypertensive depressor substance, and although the final isolation and identification and chemical identification of this substance (s) remains to be carried out, his hundreds of studies in rats, dogs, and humans have virtually proved its existence.