Michael DeBakey

His first marriage was to Diana Cooper who died of a heart attack in 1972. He tied the knot again with German actress Katrin Fehlhaber. He had a total of four sons and a daughter from both his marriages.

He lived a long life and was active well into his nineties. During his last years he suffered from heart problems and his team operated on him using the very techniques he had developed. He died of natural causes at the age 99 in 2008.

He was born to Lebanese immigrants Shaker and Raheeja Dabaghi who later changed their surname to DeBakey.

He was a bright and curious little boy who realized his interest in studying medicine at an early age. He had four younger siblings.

He received his BS degree from Tulane University in 1930 and completed his MD degree from the University’s School of Medicine in 1932. He completed his internship and residency in surgery at Charity Hospital.

As a student he devised the roller-pump which takes over the functions of the heart and lungs during surgery and provides a continuous supply of blood to the brain.

He joined the surgical faculty at the Tulane Medical School in 1937 and served there till 1948. In 1939, along with his mentor Alton Ochsner, he made the link between cigarette smoking and cancer. This finding though ridiculed at that same was proven to be true later on through additional studies.

In 1942, he volunteered for military service during World War II and was assigned to the Surgical Consultant’s Division of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office.

Over the course of his military career he helped to develop Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) Units which were used to transport wounded soldiers from the war front to the hospitals. These helped to improve the survival rates of soldiers considerably.

After the World War II, he joined the Baylor University College of Medicine as a faculty in 1948 and served as Chairman of the Department of Surgery until 1993. He was also the president of the college for ten years from 1969 to 1979.

A pioneer in cardiac surgery, he was among the first surgeons who performed coronary artery bypass surgery. He performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy in 1953.

Considered one of the greatest ever cardiologists, Dr. DeBakey performed over 60,000 operations over his highly successful career. Because of his immense popularity he was regularly called to attend to ailing world leaders like Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.