small, external, portable, battery-powered pacemaker. It was invented at his behest by Earl Bakken, whose then-small company, Medtronic, designed and repaired electronics for the University of Minnesota hospital. After the introduction of the first widely used prosthetic heart valves by Albert Starr in 1961, Lillehei also developed and implanted several innovative designs: the Lillehei-Nakib toroidal disc (1966), the Lillehei-Kaster pivoting disc (1967), and the Kalke-Lillehei rigid bileaflet prosthesis (1968). As a dedicated educator, Lillehei trained more than 150 cardiac surgeons from 40 nations, including Norman Shumway and Christiaan Barnard, who formed half of the quartet which pioneered heart transplantation (the others being Richard Lower and Adrian Kantrowitz). In 1967, he was appointed Lewis Atterbury Stimson professor and chairman of the surgery department at Cornell Medical Center, New York. He returned to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1975, where he became the director of medical affairs at St. Jude Medical. He was also named a clinical professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota. Honors Lillehei's honors include the Bronze Star for World War II service in Italy, the 1955 Lasker Award, the Order of Health Merit Jose Fernandez Madrid by the government of Colombia in 1959, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1968, induction in 1993 into the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame, and the 1996 Harvey Prize in Science and Technology. In 1966-67, he served as president of the American College of Cardiology. Personal life In 1946, Dr. Lillehei was married to Katherine Ruth (Lindberg) Lillehei (1921-2012) with whom he had four children. Following his death in 1999, he was buried at the Fort Snelling National Cemetery. His youngest brother, Richard C. Lillehei, was a notable transplant surgeon in his own right, having participated in the world's first successful transplant of a pancreas in 1966 and the first known human transplant of the small and large intestines. References Other sources Borghi L. (2015) "Heart Matters. The Collaboration Between Surgeons and Engineers in the Rise of Cardiac Surgery". In: Pisano R. (eds) A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks. History of Mechanism and Machine Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 53-68 Cooper, David (2010) Open Heart: The Radical Surgeons who Revolutionized Medicine (Kaplan Publishing) Goor, Daniel A. (2007) The Genius of C. Walton Lillehei and The True History of Open Heart Surgery (Vantage Press) Miller, G. Wayne (2000) King of Hearts, The true story of