October 4: The Heart Doctor

Dr. Adrien Kantrowitz, who performed the first heart transplant in the U.S. in 1967, was born in New York on this date in 1918. Over the course of six decades as a surgeon (including two years as a battalion surgeon in the U.S. Army medical corps during World War II), Kantrowitz and his brother Arthur designed more than twenty medical devices to aid blood circulation, organ transplantation and other surgical and health-related needs. He was the first doctor who used electronic impulses to enable paraplegic patients to move their limbs. He also designed one of the first implantable pacemakers. In 1970, after 15 years at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, his entire team of 25 surgeons, engineers and nurses moved with him to Detroit with the help of a $3 million research grant. Kantrowitz died at 90 in 2008 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“He and Jean, with whom he lived and worked for 60 years, were still creating new ventricular devices up until his death -- a few months ago he received approval to proceed with a clinical trial for a device that promises to allow seriously ill patients to exercise.”—Donald McRae, Guardian News & Media