SurgeonRichard Lynn Varco

A surgeon, Varco was a pioneer in open heart surgery and was on the team that did the first such operation, at the University of Minnesota in 1952, repairing a heart murmur in a 5-year-old girl. In the 1960s he helped develop the implantable drug-infusion pump, the forerunner to the insulin pump used by diabetics. Varco was also prolific in his research, authoring or co-authoring more than 300 scientific papers and textbooks. He died May 3 in Halfmoon Bay, B.C., Canada. He was 91.