Dear Members of the HMS and HSDM Community:
Last week we learned of the passing of Eugene Braunwald, a luminary among luminaries here in Boston. The Hersey Distinguished Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Braunwald was one of the most celebrated physician-scientists of our time. Revered by his colleagues worldwide, he was considered by many to be the “father of modern cardiology.” He died on April 22 at the age of 96.
Over the course of his long and august career, Dr. Braunwald made discoveries that fundamentally altered how we diagnose, treat, and prevent cardiovascular disease. His work helped establish the benefits of therapies such as statins and ACE inhibitors, and his groundbreaking insight that heart attacks evolve over time opened the door to early intervention strategies that save lives.
Dr. Braunwald was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1929. When the Nazis annexed the country in 1938, his family fled Europe and eventually settled in Brooklyn, New York, where the young Eugene completed high school and college in just five years. He and his medical school classmate Nina Starr (who became the first woman to perform open heart surgery) married and took up work at the National Institutes of Health during its “golden age.” It was there that, among other accomplishments, Dr. Braunwald defined the pathophysiology of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy alongside cardiac surgeon Andrew Glenn Morrow.
In the early 1970s, Dr. Braunwald assumed the position of HMS chair of the Department of Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, which later became Brigham and Women’s. Under his 24-year leadership, the department’s annual direct research budget grew from $3 million to more than $80 million. He recruited and mentored outstanding physician-scientists and future academic leaders, inspiring the American Heart Association to create an annual mentorship award in his name.
Dr. Braunwald may be known best for founding the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TMI) Study Group, which has enrolled more than 450,000 patients in over 80 clinical trials since 1984. It is impossible to overstate the effect this study group has had — Dr. Braunwald clearly understood the importance of linking basic research to clinical practice, and he achieved this through a study group with an extensive sphere of influence spanning 50 countries and 5,000 clinical sites.
Dr. Braunwald’s list of accolades is too lengthy to enumerate here, but among them, he was the first adult cardiologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences; he was honored with the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize (2001); and he was the recipient of three lifetime achievement awards from the Heart Failure Society of America (2010), the American College of Cardiology (2010), and the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (2013).
On April 23, the day after Dr. Braunwald passed, the Medical University of Vienna marked the official completion of its Center for Translational Medicine, a new state-of-the-art facility housing the Eugene Braunwald Auditorium — a full-circle recognition of his meaningful ties to Austria and his dedication to making substantial medical progress for all people.
Dr. Braunwald will be remembered as a fiercely devoted mentor, a determined scholar, an incisive editor of leading textbooks, a humanist with a love for opera, a quick wit, a humble servant of the public welfare, and a titan within the Harvard Medical ecosystem. Our hearts go out to Dr. Braunwald’s family, loved ones, colleagues, and all who were fortunate enough to be guided by his watchful and encouraging mentorship.
Sincerely,
George Q. Daley
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
Harvard University