Sol grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, a brilliant but undisciplined student whose grades were outstanding or poor but never average. He was drafted into the military twice, in 1943 and in 1953, and with the Army’s support he completed medical school at the University of Southern California. After medical residency at the University of Chicago, he directed a tuberculosis ward at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, where he was inspired by Bill Harris and William Stead to pursue a career in pulmonary medicine. In 1955, he became chief resident in medicine under Robert Bloch at Montefiore Hospital in New York, and in 1956 began research training under Richard Riley at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He served for 3 years as Chief of Cardiopulmonary Physiology at National Jewish Hospital in Denver before returning to Hopkins in 1961, where he spent the rest of his career. He was the Director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine from 1972 to 1981. After stepping down from the directorship, Sol devoted his tremendous energy and talent to research in respiratory disease and to training of young scientists and clinicians.

His professional colleagues remember Sol as an intellectual giant, capable of interpreting data with extraordinary insight and seeing relationships that nobody else could discern. When they went to Sol with a with a vexing scientific question, he would spend days, sometimes weeks, in deep intense thought, engaging anyone who might know something pertinent, exploring every aspect of the problem, most of which nobody had thought to consider. Through endless passionate discussion, he led his colleagues invariably to new insights and higher levels of understanding than they ever thought possible. For countless fellows and faculty colleagues over the years, working with Sol was the most intellectually exciting and satisfying experience of their professional lives. Sol was their source of light.

Sol was a luminary in the fields of pulmonary and critical care, an extraordinary researcher, physician, colleague and friend. He transformed the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, and contributed heavily to the research of cardiopulmonary physiology. During his tenure, he inaugurated a collaborative program integrating the clinical, research, and educational activities of the division with programs in the School of Public Health. He also oversaw extensive growth in the division’s clinical program, including the opening of a new intensive care unit and a new bronchoscopy program, as well as clinical consultative and inpatient services provided to other Baltimore-area hospitals.

Dr. Permutt received numerous awards for his contributions to pulmonary biology and medicine, including two of the most prestigious in the field, the George Wills Comstock Award from the American Lung Association in 1988 and the Edward Livingston Trudeau Medal from the American Thoracic Society in 1992.

He mentored countless trainees and junior faculty, both in the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the School of Medicine, including numerous current Hopkins faculty members as well as dozens of individuals who became leaders in the field of respiratory and cardiovascular physiology around the country and overseas.