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Edmund Sonnenblick
1932–2007
by Eugene Braunwald

According to Edmund Sonnenblick ’58, his career in cardiology opened just like a mitral valve—with a snap. Ed’s contributions to cardiovascular physiology came at a clip many only dream of attaining: His early career research shed new light on how the heart’s muscle performs and planted a seed that grew into the field of myocardial muscle mechanics. On September 22, 2007, at his home in Darien, Connecticut, the work of this visionary cardiologist came to a close when he succumbed to esophageal cancer at age 74.

The snap that Ed referred to was the result of research he undertook while on a two-year appointment at the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Physiology at the National Institutes of Health. He had interrupted his residency at Columbia–Presbyterian Medical Center to move to the Bethesda, Maryland–based institute so that he could investigate the functioning of cardiac muscle. When he published his findings at age 30, he hit the proverbial ball out of the park, showing for the first time how the performance of cardiac muscle affected the volume of blood pumped by the heart. His single-authored paper described the force velocity of isolated cardiac muscle. The revolutionary tenets he established in that paper are now so taken for granted that few can imagine performing a cardiac function assessment without referencing them.

Although he had almost single-handedly created what would become the field of myocardial muscle mechanics, Ed had little time for reflection—he still needed to complete his clinical training. He returned to Columbia–Presbyterian for his senior medical residency, and, true to form for this aspiring physician–scientist, hit another home run. Using the recently developed technique of quantitative electron microscopy, Ed created images of heart muscle in action, effectively providing an ultrastructural basis to Starling’s Law of the Heart. I can vividly recall listening to Ed present his work to a rapt audience at a meeting of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1963. The society’s president, awestruck by Ed’s presentation, opened discussion of it by saying, “If I were born again, I would surely become an electron microscopist.”

Ed returned to the NIH’s intramural program following his residency and joined the cardiology branch, which I then headed. He, John Ross, Jr., and I collaborated closely for four exciting years. First, we extended the framework of myocardial muscle mechanics to the intact dog heart and then to the human heart. In subjects in whom radio-opaque markers had been surgically attached to the left ventricle, Ed showed that even mild exercise shifted the ventricle’s force-velocity relation and that this shift could be abolished by beta-adrenergic blockade. This observation extended to the intact human heart the same features Ed had described for the isolated cat papillary muscle. These experiments showed for the first time the critical importance of activation of the sympathetic nervous system to the human heart’s response to exercise.

In 1967 Ed returned to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital as director of cardiovascular research. Eight years later, he accepted a professorship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. There, he created a modern cardiovascular division and recruited a cadre of outstanding investigators and clinicians. Under his leadership, the division prospered and became recognized as being among the best in the nation.

Ed’s final appointment at the college, as the Safra Distinguished University Professor of Medicine and chief emeritus of the cardiology division, saw him moving into a new research area: stem cell therapy for murine heart failure.

Shortly before his death, Ed learned the American Heart Association had named him for its most prestigious prize: the Research Achievement Award. A handwritten acceptance speech, discovered after his death, was read at the award ceremony. It was vintage Ed: “My colleagues have been as much friends as collaborators. I hope the current generation of researchers have as much fun together and satisfaction as we did. It is the ties with friends and family that matter most, and it is the respect of our peers that motivates us.”

Ed is survived by his wife of 52 years, Linda; two daughters, Emily and Charlotte; and five grandchildren.

Eugene Braunwald, MD, is the Distinguished Hersey Professor at Harvard Medical School and chairman of the TIMI (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction) Study Group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Photo caption: A self-taught sailor, Sonnenblick would navigate the waters along the East Coast each summer.

Photo: Linda B. Sonnenblick