Business & Science
Denton Cooley
Houston-born Denton Cooley founded the Texas Heart Institute and helped make the Texas Medical Center a global cardiovascular center, including the first implantation of a total artificial heart in a human in 1969.
- Roster rank
- #163
- Category
- Business & Science
- Subject type
- Person
- Profile source
- Published Texas Icons profile
Texas story
Life and career
Denton Arthur Cooley was born in Houston in 1920 and became one of the city's defining cardiovascular surgeons. In 1962 he founded the Texas Heart Institute, creating an institution that combined clinical care, research and surgical training inside the Texas Medical Center.
Cooley's team performed major transplant and mechanical-circulatory-support milestones. On April 4, 1969, he implanted a total artificial heart developed by Domingo Liotta as a bridge until a donor heart became available. That event became both a medical landmark and part of the complicated professional history of Houston's heart-surgery pioneers.
Defining work
What to know
- Texas Heart Institute founder
- 1969 total artificial heart implantation
- heart-transplant surgery
- Houston cardiovascular institution building
Timeline
Key milestones
- 1920Born in Houston, Texas.
- 1962Founds the Texas Heart Institute.
- 1968Texas Heart Institute records the first successful heart transplant in the United States among its milestones.
- 1969Implants the world's first total artificial heart in a human as a bridge to transplant.
- 2016Dies in Houston.
Texas connections
Places in the story
Houston
Birthplace and lifelong center of Cooley's surgical career.
Texas Medical Center
Institutional setting for the Texas Heart Institute and major cardiovascular milestones.
Legacy
Why the story lasts
Cooley's legacy rests on both surgical innovation and institution building; the Texas Heart Institute continued long after the individual procedures that made headlines.
The artificial-heart milestone should credit the device-development team as well as the surgeon who implanted it.
Sources
Research trail
Cross-linked profiles