Michel Mirowski

Michel Mirowski (1924 to 1990) was a cardiologist who conceived the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD, in the 1960s after his mentor died of a heart arrhythmia. Born on 14 October 1924 in Warsaw, Poland, he left home at age fourteen to escape the Nazis and was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. After the war he attended medical school in Lyon, completed his residency at Tel Hashomer Hospital in Israel and held cardiology fellowships in Baltimore and Mexico City. In 1968 he became the first Director of the Coronary Care Unit at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore, where he conducted his research on the ICD. Facing formidable opposition from the medical community, he led a team that designed and tested the first ICD, with the first human implant in 1980. The device was originally the size of a deck of cards and weighed nine ounces. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002.