Prior Chairs, Leadership, and Trainees

Elias Samuel Cooper, a San Francisco surgeon from the Midwest, authors the "Report of an Operation to Remove a Foreign Body from Beneath the Heart," in 1857. In 1859, he establishes the first medical school in the western U.S. Originally known as the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, the school undergoes various name changes—including being named for Cooper himself as the Cooper Medical College—and later as the University of California, San Francisco. It is reorganized in 1908 into the Stanford School of Medicine.

Stanford University School of Medicine and the Predecessor Schools: An Historical Perspective - Part I. Background History & E.S. Cooper's Midwestern Years - Chapter 4. Elias Cooper & Medical Schools West of the Alleghenies

Stanford University Medical School

After completing his undergraduate degree from Stanford School of Medicine in 1911 and graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1918, Emile Holman returns to Stanford and becomes the first chair of the Department of Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine. During his long tenure, Holman establishes the surgical residency program and performs many extracardiac and closed heart procedures. Holman sets up the Halsted Laboratory of Surgical Research, which becomes an active research facility for faculty. Holman becomes best known for his work on arteriovenous fistulas and writes more than 40 papers reflecting both laboratory and clinical observations and experimentation in this field. Holman also serves as the 33rd president of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery.

Historical Perspectives of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery: Emile Frederic Holman, MD (1890–1977)

While earning his medical degree from Stanford in 1936, Frank L.A. Gerbode becomes an active researcher in the lab of Emile Holman. Encouraged by Leo Eloesser, he pursues surgical training a year later. Gerbode serves as the chief resident in surgery (1939 to 1940) and later joins the Stanford faculty as a surgical instructor (1940-1942). After serving in WWII as part of the Stanford Unit of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, Gerbode returns to Stanford and leads a research team that advances the development of a membrane oxygenator, a heat exchanger that allows for the cooling and rewarming of blood, and bypass circuits that reduced injury to the red blood cells and platelets. Gerbode also visits John (Jack) Gibbon's laboratory in Philadelphia in 1952 to watch his progress in developing the heart-lung machine. In addition to his pioneering open-heart operation in 1954, Gerbode successfully completes surgical correction of left ventricular to right atrial shunts; thereafter, a direct communication between the left ventricle and the right atrium becomes known as the Gerbode defect. Gerbode serves as the 53rd American Association for Thoracic Surgery president.

Historical perspectives of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery: Frank Gerbode (1907-1984)

In 1968, Norman E. Shumway Jr. performs the first successful heart transplantation in the U.S., helping to put Stanford’s cardiovascular transplant program on the map. He establishes the Stanford Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and in 1981, alongside fellow Stanford surgeon Bruce Reitz, he makes history again by performing the world’s first successful combined heart-lung transplant. A true pioneer in the field, Shumway is credited with mentoring numerous surgeons, referring to himself once as the world's greatest first assistant, a nod to his tendency to have younger surgeons working alongside him to learn and grow. His pioneering surgery in 1968, in which he puts a donor heart inside a 54-year-old ailing steel worker, changes cardiothoracic surgery in the U.S., and establishes Stanford as an early leader in the field. Shumway’s early work with hearts begins with experiments in canines and in perfecting techniques to cool the heart and slow its metabolic processes, giving surgeons additional time to operate. In the early days of heart transplants, Shumway works to develop procedures to increase the survival rate of transplant patients. Shumway serves as the 67th American Association for Thoracic Surgery president.

A Surgeon with Heart

Timeline of Norman Shumway's career at Stanford

Pioneering heart transplant surgeon retires

The system, which is still widely used today, divides aortic dissections into two groups, type A and type B, based on whether the ascending aorta is involved, regardless of the site of tear and the extent of dissection. Throughout his four-decade career, Daily publishes more than 100 scientific articles. He becomes best known for introduced percutaneous internal jugular venous catheterization, central aortic CPB cannulation, the Stanford type A and type B nomenclature system for aortic dissections, AC electrical fibrillation of the heart, the Daily cooling jacket, and successful surgical techniques and instruments for pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTEA).

Management of Acute Aortic Dissections

Evolution of surgical therapy for Stanford acute type A aortic dissection

Pat O. Daily Memorial Award for Clinical Excellence in Cardiovascular Surgery

James B.D. Mark serves as the founding chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery from 1972 to 1997, as well as acting chair of the Department of Surgery from 1974 to 1977. Mark becomes the chief of staff of Stanford University Hospital in 1988. He later becomes the Johnson and Johnson Professor Emeritus of Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine. Mark is an early leader in advancing thoracoscopy beyond its known diagnostic utility into a therapeutic modality and sets a precedent for the development of video-assisted thoracic surgery in the 1990s. In 1994, he is elected president of the American College of Chest Physicians.

Interview with James B.D. Mark (2015)

Bruce A. Reitz graduates from Stanford and completes his residency at Stanford School of Medicine in 1976. He joins the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery faculty in 1978. Reitz's research includes investigating the surgical, physiologic, and immunologic facets of combined heart-lung transplantation in a nonhuman primate model. He and Shumway perform the world's first successful heart-lung transplant in 1981. From 1993 to 2005, Reitz serves as chair of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery. 

Thirty-five years later, Stanford surgeon Bruce Reitz recalls first successful adult heart-lung transplant

Bruce Reitz and R. Scott Mitchell Celebration:  Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3

Randall Griepp came to Stanford in 1968, where he completed general surgical and cardiac surgical training under Norman Shumway, and graduated from Stanford in 1972. Griepp performs his first heart transplant in 1970 on a patient who becomes the longest surviving heart transplant recipient for many years, living 26 years post-transplant. Along with Edward Stinson, Griepp leads the Stanford heart transplant team during the early 1970s, the formative years of cardiac transplantation. Griepp explores profound hypothermic circulatory arrest (PHCA) to protect the brain, which at the time is employed for cardiac surgery in infants. The procedure reduces cerebral metabolic demand to tolerable levels and provides a bloodless operative field in which to work. It becomes the standard for more than two decades. Griepp's pioneering methods for successful total arch replacement using PHCA represent a monumental advance that changes the world of thoracic aortic surgery after 1975. The work of Griepp and others helps position Stanford’s heart transplant team as a leader within the transplant community.  

The Randall B. Griepp Honorary Paper

Renowned CT Surgeon Dr. Randall Griepp Dies at 82

In Memoriam: Randall B. Griepp (1940-2022): Master Surgeon, Innovator, Scientist, Teacher, and Sailor

Margaret Allen is the first woman to perform a heart transplant and the former president of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). In 1970, she enrolls at the University of California, San Diego, to study for a Doctor of Medicine. While in medical school, Allen works in a vascular surgeon's lab who was implanting experimental hearts into cows. This exposure was her first experience with cardiothoracic surgery. After spending six months working in a Papua New Guinea hospital, she returns to the United States to undertake another residency in cardiac surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine from 1982 to 1985. At Stanford, she trains under the tutelage of Norman Shumway, a pioneer in heart transplantation, and becomes the first woman in the world to transplant a heart. She receives the "Woman of the Year" award from the International Women's Forum in 1990. In 1994, she is elected national president of UNOS, the first woman to hold the position. She establishes the University of Washington Medical Center's heart transplant program, the first in the Pacific Northwest region, and served as its director until 1996.

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