Denton Arthur Cooley was an American heart and cardiothoracic surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley was also the founder and surgeon in-chief of The Texas Heart Institute, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at clinical partner Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, consultant in Cardiovascular Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital and a clinical professor of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Daniel Hale Williams was an American general surgeon, who in 1893 performed what is referred to as "the first successful heart surgery". In 1913, Williams was elected as the only African-American charter member of the American College of Surgeons.
The University of Minnesota Medical School is the medical school of the University of Minnesota. It is a combination of two campuses situated in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota. The University of Minnesota Medical School is also part of one of the largest Academic Health Centers (AHC) in the United States. This center allows health professionals to train collaboratively across interdisciplinary teams throughout the course of their training programs. The AHC comprises the Medical School, School of Dentistry, School of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, School of Public Health, and the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine is the medical school of Northwestern University and is located in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1859, Feinberg offers a full-time Doctor of Medicine degree program, multiple joint degree programs, graduate medical education, and continuing medical education.
Devi Prasad Shetty, MS, FRCS, is an Indian entrepreneur and cardiac surgeon who is the chairman and founder of Narayana Health, a chain of 21 medical centers in India. He has performed more than 16,000 heart operations. In 2004 he was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, followed by the Padma Bhushan in 2012, the third highest civilian award by the Government of India for his contribution to the field of affordable healthcare. There is an episode about his life and work on the Netflix TV series The Surgeon's Cut.
Bruce A. Reitz is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, best known for leading the first combined heart-lung transplantation in 1981 with pioneer heart transplant surgeon Norman Shumway. He obtained an undergraduate degree at Stanford University a medical degree at Yale Medical School and completed an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1971) and residencies and fellowships at Stanford University Hospital the National Institutes of Health (1974). He joined the surgical faculty at Stanford University (1978) then became chief of cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins University (1982–92) and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford (1992–2005). In 1995 he conducted another pioneering operation: the first Heartport procedure, using a device that allows minimally invasive coronary bypass and valve operations. Reitz also played a major role in the resident education program at Stanford, which he reorganized and maintained.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) is a nationally ranked academic medical center located in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship campus for Northwestern Medicine and the primary teaching hospital for the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Affiliated institutions also located on campus include the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital with Level I pediatric trauma care and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a leader in physical medicine and rehabilitation.
Paul Maurice Zoll was a Jewish American cardiologist and one of the pioneers in the development of the artificial cardiac pacemaker and cardiac defibrillator. He graduated from Boston Latin School in 1928.
Michael Lesch was a Jewish American physician and medical educator who helped identify an important genetic disorder associated with retardation and self-mutilation. This disease is now known as the Lesch–Nyhan syndrome. In the mid-1960s when the syndrome was discovered, Lesch was a research associate working at the Laboratory of General and Comparative Biochemistry at the NIH National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. William Nyhan, a pediatrician and biochemical geneticist, was his mentor. Lesch was 30 years old when he discovered the disease.
Forest Dewey Dodrill was a doctor at Harper University Hospital at Wayne State University in Michigan who performed the first successful open heart surgery using a mechanical pump.
Leonard J. Cerullo is a board-certified neurosurgeon and founder/medical director.
William Wallace Lumpkin Glenn was an American cardiac surgeon who co-created an early version of an artificial heart and was the developer of a technique for the treatment of congenital heart defects.
Lawrence H. Cohn, was an American-born pioneering cardiac surgeon, researcher, and medical educator. He had been on the surgical staff at Harvard Medical School since 1971 and had been a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School since 1980. In 2000, he was awarded the first endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Norman Edward Shumway was a pioneer of heart surgery at Stanford University. He was the 67th president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and the first to perform an adult human to human heart transplantation in the United States.
Patrick M. McCarthy is a cardiac surgeon, executive director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern Medicine, the first Heller-Sacks Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, chief of the Division of Cardiac Surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering. Through his work with the School of Engineering, McCarthy serves as a Farley Fellow.
Richard Lee is a cardiac surgeon in St. Louis, Missouri, who helped pioneer a staged Hybrid Maze, a procedure for atrial fibrillation or AFIB. combining surgery and catheter based approaches.
Charles DeWitt Watts was an African-American surgeon and activist for the poor. Watts was the first surgeon of African-American ancestry in North Carolina. Earning his medical degree in 1943 from Howard University College, he was the first African-American board-certified surgeon to serve in North Carolina. After surgical training at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C., in 1949, he moved to Durham, North Carolina, in 1950 and established a clinic to provide access to medical services for the poor. Breaking the social customs of racial obstacles, he advocated for certification of African-American medical students. He also became a member of many professional colleges including the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine and the American College of Surgeons. He served as chief of surgery at Durham's Lincoln Hospital and was later one of the key figures in converting it to the Lincoln Community Health Center, a low-priced clinic for the poor.
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
Wenner Dudley Johnson was an American cardiothoracic surgeon who became known as the father of coronary artery bypass surgery. He and a colleague operated on one of the longest-surviving patients in the early days of heart transplants, and he made significant contributions to several other cardiac surgical procedures.
Willis John Potts was an American pediatric surgeon and one of the earliest physicians to focus on the surgical treatment of heart problems in children. Potts set up one of the country's first pediatric surgery programs at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
