Pim van Lommel is a cardiologist and medical expert on near-death experiences who has traveled the world. He worked as a cardiologist in an eight-hundred-bed teaching hospital in the Netherlands for more than twenty-five years, where he began researching near-death experiences in patients who had survived cardiac arrest. Van Lommel has penned chapters in various books regarding near-death experiences and has published numerous articles on the issue, in addition to his dramatic report published in the prestigious British medical magazine The Lancet. Van Lommel has lectured about near-death experiences and the relationship between consciousness and brain function all around the world for the past many years. On behalf of the International Association of Near-Death Studies, he received the Bruce Greyson Research Prize in 2005. At the International Congress on Clinical and Preventive Cardiology in New Delhi in 2006, the president of India presented him with the lifetime achievement award.