He was a professor of medicine at the University of Cape Town, where he conducted both experimental and clinical research on heart disease and cardiovascular physiology, metabolism, and pharmacology.
[1] After leaving Oxford, Opie spent two years in Boston, Massachusetts, where he researched myocardial metabolism as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Medical School.
[1][4] That research culminated in another doctoral dissertation, this one on myocardial intermediary metabolism, which earned him an MD from the University of Cape Town in 1961.
[3] In 1970, he and Richard Bing founded the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology,[2] which became the official publication of the International Society for Heart Research.
[1] His research was initially funded by Christiaan Barnard, who donated the proceeds from sales of his bestselling book One Life.
[3] He was the institute's director until 2010, in which capacity he ran its highly acclaimed annual conference series, Cardiology at the Limits.
[1] In 2006, President Thabo Mbeki admitted Opie to the Order of Mapungubwe, granting him the award in silver for "his excellent contribution to the knowledge of and achievement in the field of cardiology".
[11] In 2012 the University of Cape Town's Department of Medicine gave him a special award for his prolific and seminal research contributions.