Abstract
This article serves as a ready reference guide to the pioneering formal studies in cardiovascular disease (CVD) epidemiology initiated during 3 decades of the subject's evolution into an established academic field that contributed to the public health. The article is not intended to be a history of CVD epidemiology or an editorial about its significance. The appended tables include the titles and starting dates of the early studies, the names of their principal investigators, and references to a single defining article from each. The early observational studies of CVD epidemiology provided a widely useful CVD risk-factor paradigm. The early clinical trials justified the more definitive preventive trials of the 1980s and beyond. This early research in populations, along with others in clinics and laboratories, led to greater understanding of the causes of CVD, to a vigorous practice of preventive cardiology, and to national policy and programs of health promotion, all of which were coincident with a 50-year decline in CVD mortality rates.