Early AAMI Supporter Remembered for Inventive Ways
 Wilson Greatbatch |
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Those who knew Wilson Greatbatch best said you wouldn’t know that he was rich from inventing one of the first cardiac pacemakers. To Greatbatch, it was never about the money; it was about the science.
“Wilson thought of himself as merely a humble servant,” said Edward Duffie Jr., a retired pediatric cardiologist and an early admirer of the man. “I wish we had some more like him around.”
Greatbatch was 92 when he died at his home in Williamsville, NY, on September 27, 2011.
Greatbatch was behind more than 325 inventions, the most famous of which was one of the first cardiac implantable pacemakers. He also was an early supporter of AAMI, and participated in many fledgling standards committees. The association even honored the inventor by making him half of the namesake of the AAMI Foundation’s Laufman-Greatbatch Prize, given each year to an individual or group who made unique and significant contributions to the advancement of medical instrumentation.
But he wasn’t one to seek fame or prestige for doing something that he loves.
“To ask for a successful experiment, for professional stature, for financial reward or for peer approval is asking to be paid for what should be an act of love,” he wrote in his 2000 memoir, The Making of the Pacemaker.
“I can hear his voice in those words, which speak volumes about the motivation behind science and invention,” said Robert Flink, a former director of standards for Minneapolis, MN-based Medtronic, who also served with Greatbatch on AAMI’s pacemaker committee.
Creating the Pacemaker
Greatbatch made his first major breakthrough almost by accident.
In 1956, he was an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Buffalo. “While building a heart rhythm recording device for the Chronic Disease Research Institute there, he reached into a box of parts for a resistor to complete the circuitry,” according to his obituary in The New York Times. “The one he pulled out was the wrong size, and when he installed it, the circuit it produced emitted intermittent electrical pulses.”
Greatbatch then recognized that the pulses resembled a human heartbeat, and realized the potential this device had. “He had a unique ability to perceive important issues in technology, and figure out ways to resolve them to the great benefit of patients,” said Michael J. Miller, who served as AAMI’s president for 40 years.
He continued to experiment with how to shrink the equipment and shield it from bodily fluids, according to the obituary.
“On May 7, 1958, doctors at the Veterans Administration hospital in Buffalo demonstrated that a version he had created, of just two cubic inches, could take control of a dog’s heartbeat,” the obituary reads.
Two years later, Greatbatch worked with William C. Chardack, MD, to implant the device in 10 human patients, including two children.
Wilson Greatbatch never stopped inventing, even on his 72nd birthday when he traveled the Finger Lakes in a solar-pwered canoe. |
Greatbatch would continue to develop pacemakers through his company, Wilson Greatbatch, Ltd. “When he made a dramatic announcement at an AAMI annual meeting about turning his attentions to lithium batteries for pacemakers, I had little doubt he would succeed,” said Flink.
His company is still making lithium iodide batteries for the pacemaker community today.
Greatbatch didn’t just focus his innovative attention on devices or medical technology for humans for that matter. He helped adapt physiological monitors to examine test monkeys that were launched into space.
On Greatbatch’s 72nd birthday, instead of spending a nice quiet day blowing out candles, he traveled 142 miles along the Finger Lakes in New York in a solar-powered canoe that he built.
He also never stopped trying to inspire the next generation of scientists. Greatbatch visited thousands of schoolchildren to talk about inventing, and had his secretary read aloud papers from graduate engineering students so he could still review them even after his eyesight started to fail, the obituary reads.
“I’m beginning to think I may not change the world, but I’m still trying," he told The New York Times in 2007.
AAMI News: November 2011, Vol. 46, No. 11