John W. Kirklin

John W. Kirklin (1917-April 21, 2004) was born in Muncie, Indiana. After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1942 he made several important contributions to heart surgery. He is noted especially with refining the heart-lung machine, originally developed by John Gibbon, to the point that heart surgeries could be performed with a high degree of success. Kirklin was responsible for bringing the heart-lung machine into routine use in heart surgery. After accepting a position at the University of Alabama School of Medicine as chair of the Department of Surgery in 1966, he built the school and UAB hospital system into one of the leaders in the healthcare industry. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, AL