Gerald Buckberg
Gerald Buckberg (September 29, 1935 – September 20, 2018) was an American surgeon. His research initially centered in the area of myocardial protection and led to the introduction of blood cardioplegia, which is currently used by over 85% of surgeons in the United States and 75% of surgeons worldwide for adult and pediatric heart operations. He was a member of multiple surgical societies, including the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, American Surgical Association, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. He was Professor of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. School and early career Gerald D. Buckberg received his Cardiothoracic training at the UCLA Medical Center. He began his training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he studied with Alfred Blalock, world renowned for developing a procedure to help children with Blue Baby Syndrome (where insufficient blood travels to the lungs due to congenital heart defects). Buckberg went on to receive subsequent research training (following completion of his clinical heart surgery residency) at the Cardiovascular Institute at the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked with Julien Hoffman to discover a novel way to study blood supply in small regions of the heart and in other organs.