Artificial heart pioneer Dr. John C. Norman Jr. dead at 84

[theHandpuppet]

RIP, Dr. Norman. Your skill and vision saved countless lives.

For more on Dr. Norman and his family, please see: http://www.wvculture.org/history/norman.html
Please cross post.

The Charleston Gazette
August 26, 2014
Artificial heart pioneer Dr. John C. Norman Jr. dead at 84
By Rick Steelhammer, Staff writer

Dr. John C. Norman Jr. was born and raised in Charleston. Dr. John Clavon Norman Jr., a Charleston-born, Harvard-educated cardiovascular surgeon and artificial heart pioneer, died Saturday in a Bedford, Massachusetts, acute-care facility. He was 84.

The son of Charleston architect and structural engineer John C. Norman Sr. and Ruth Stephenson Norman, who taught high school English classes in Kanawha County public schools for 53 years, Norman was valedictorian of Garnet High School’s class of 1946, and entered Howard University in Washington, D.C., at age 16. Norman transferred from Howard to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1950. He then enrolled in Harvard’s medical school and, after earning his M.D. degree, spent 1957 and 1958 on active duty with the U.S. Navy, where he served as ship’s surgeon aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and attained the rank of lieutenant commander.

Following internship and residency at Presbyterian Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital in New York, he completed his cardiac surgical training at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

In 1962, Norman was a National Institutes of Health fellow at England’s University of Birmingham and, in 1964, he joined the surgical staff at Boston City Hospital while serving as an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. - See more at: http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20140826/GZ01/140829437/1419#sthash.uQwfoCma.dpuf

[theHandpuppet]

1. Short bio from the West Virginia Dept. of Archives & History

http://www.wvculture.org/history/norman.html
(Follow link to photo of Dr. Norman, as child, with his parents)

Noted thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon and researcher John C. Norman Jr. was born May 11, 1930, in Charleston, West Virginia. His mother Ruth Stephenson Norman was a longtime educator in Kanawha County; his father John Norman Sr. was an architect and structural engineer. After graduating valedictorian from Garnet High School in 1946, John Norman entered Howard University. He later transferred to Harvard and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1950.

John Norman received his M. D. from Harvard Medical School in 1954. Following an internship and residency in New York, he served aboard the aircraft carrier Saratoga in 1957 and 1958 before completing his cardiac surgical training at the University of Michigan. In 1962, Norman was a National Institutes of Health fellow at the University of Birmingham, England.

Norman became an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and joined the surgical staff at Boston City Hospital in 1964. In addition to his teaching and surgical duties, Norman undertook several medical research projects involving organ transplants. In 1967, he successfully transplanted the spleen of a healthy dog into a hemophiliac beagle. As a result of their research on the liver, Norman and his associates were able to use a pig's liver to keep a patient alive for eighteen days.

It was while in Boston that Norman also began important research into a left ventricular assist device for cardiac patients. This research took him to the prestigious Texas Heart Institute in 1972. For the next several years, Norman worked on development of the first abdominal left ventricular assist device (ALVAD), which could be implanted temporarily in patients suffering cardiac failure after open-heart surgery. Between 1975 and 1978, Norman and institute founder Dr. Denton Cooley implanted a number of these devices. Norman also researched potential power sources and materials for artificial hearts.

Norman later worked as a surgeon at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey before returning to West Virginia in 1986 to serve for several years as chairman of the surgery department at Marshall University School of Medicine. For his work in medical research, Norman was awarded the 1985 Congressional High Technology Award. He previously was honored as the Charleston Gazette-Mail's West Virginian of the Year for 1971.