Deceased May 17, 2008
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In Memory
Dick Lower died May 17, 2008, in Montana at the family’s log home on the Big Hole River, after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. Dick is surely one of the most famous physicians of our time, and as recognized by Amherst in designating him an Honorary Doctor of Science in 1971, he has contributed significantly to the profession of medicine, in particular cardiovascular surgery.
Dick was born in Detroit, attended Detroit Country Day, Kenyon College, and transferred to Amherst in 1949. He was a member of Alpha Delta Phi. While achieving Phi Beta Kappa recognition, he had the presence of mind to court Anne Rutherford (Mount Holyoke ’52), and they were married in 1953. He is survived by Anne and four of their five children.
Dick graduated from Cornell Medical School with his M.D. in 1955, where he nourished an ambition to become a general practitioner. Serendipity, however, led him in a different direction. Dick entered a rotating internship at the King County Hospital in Seattle. In the period 1956-58, he served with the US Public Health Service Division of Indian Health, Yuma, AZ, and Owyhee, NV. In 1958, he took a surgical residency in the laboratory of Dr. Norman Shumway at Stanford.
Dr. Shumway’s interest was in cardiac transplantation, and both the medical and world communities credit him with the principal role in developing techniques to accomplish this feat. In fact, it was Dick Lower who performed the first successful heart transplant, in a dog. Lower combined Shumway’s technique of topical hypothermia, which afforded the surgeon a relatively bloodless field, with his own innovative way of removing the donor heart so as to permit effective suturing into the site where the recipient’s heart had been removed. Lower performed this first successful “orthotopic” transplant in 1959. His techniques led directly to human heart transplantation that began in the 1960s. The technical literature of that era cites numerous publications on the subject by Lower.
In 1965 after his surgical training and research years, Dick moved to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond to chair cardiothoracic surgery. In 1966, Dr. Christian Barnard spent four months in Lower’s lab and returned to South Africa to perform the first human heart transplant in 1967. In 1968, Dick performed the ninth heart transplant in this country. During the next two decades, he was involved in 393 transplant procedures and guided the university’s heart transplant program, the nation’s second oldest, to national prominence.
In a press release of April 9, 2008, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation “recognizes world-renowned surgeon and pioneer, Richard Lower, MD, for his contributions related to heart transplant surgery.” Dr. Marc Katz, a cardiac fellow in Dick’s program, continued: “Dr. Lower has been a hidden gem in the field of cardiac transplantation. His humility and shy nature have kept many from recognizing his contributions. Those of us fortunate enough to have worked with him are thankful for his immense knowledge, insight, and surgical skill. It has been a great honor to stand on the shoulders of this giant.” Further on, Dr. Shumway is quoted: “He gave us unequivocal evidence that transplantation would work.”
Dick and Anne bought a cattle ranch in Twin Bridges, MT, in 1972. After retiring from the Medical College of Virginia in 1989, he returned to the Big Hole Ranch, raising cattle on many acres of magnificent range land while finding time to fish one of the best trout streams in the west. During this time, Dick and Anne also maintained their home in Richmond. At age seventy, Dick gave up ranching but built a log home on the Big Hole. He returned to Richmond; there he prepared for and completed his certification in family practice, thus bringing his professional career full circle from a medical school ambition interrupted by a thirty year stint as a world class heart surgeon to working as a volunteer physician at a free clinic in Richmond.
Dick’s fame as a surgeon and his subsequent devotion to family practice illustrates his humanitarian side as equal to his scientific one and have brought honor to Amherst. With all the fame, Dick has always been wise and humorous in his candor, as well as remarkably outgoing, good natured, and unassuming. Our Class has lost a genuinely great man but so, too, did the world of medicine and, indeed, the world at large!
Jeff Hartzell ’51
John Keydel ’51