A New York cardiologist, Sonnenblick wanted to better understand the cause of heart failure so he could treat it more effectively. In the early 1960s he was the first to use a new tool to study heart muscle cells, the electron microscope, which revealed fundamental differences in heart muscle from other muscle types in the body.
When Sonnenblick, one of the “greatest heart and blood vessel physiologists of the 20th century,” according to Harvard cardiologist Dr. Eugene Braunwald, showed the resulting photographs at a medical conference, “a hush fell over the audience” as he showed how the heart actually worked to pump blood. With that knowledge, new treatments for heart failure could be developed by Sonnenblick and others, including ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors and more effective beta blockers, prolonging the lives of millions of people with heart problems.
Sonnenblick was given the Distinguished Scientist Award by the American College of Cardiology in 1985, and the American Heart Association will (now posthumously) give him the 2007 Research Achievement Award in November. Dr. Sonnenblick’s work will live on: he trained more than 300 cardiologists and heart researchers. He died September 22 from esophageal cancer. He was 74.