Bernard Lown

Dr. Lown is Professor Emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health and senior physician (ret.) at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is the founder of the Lown Cardiovascular Group and the Chairman Emeritus of the Lown Institute. During a research career spanning more than 50 years, Dr. Lown’s achievements changed the practice of cardiology. He pioneered development of the direct current defibrillator, now the standard of care for cardiac resuscitation. He developed the cardioverter for correcting disordered heart rhythms, and established the basis for the modern coronary care unit. Dr. Lown’s work also has contributed substantially to an understanding of the role of psychological factors in heart disease. He pursued the formidable problem of sudden cardiac death, the leading cause of mortality in the developed world, and has been a consummate clinical teacher and lecturer who inspired hundreds of medical students as well as over two hundred research fellows in the Lown training program.