Alain F. Carpentier

Alain Frédéric Carpentier M.D. Ph.D. (born August 11, 1933 in Toulouse, Haute-Garonne) is a French heart surgeon whom the President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery calls the father of modern mitral valve repair.

A professor emeritus at Pierre and Marie Currie University, in the 1980s Dr. Carpentier published a landmark paper on mitral valve repair entitled The French Correction. A visiting professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, he currently heads the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Dr. Carpentier is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and sits on the Board of Directors of the World Heart Foundation. The recipient of numerous awards, including the 1996 Prix mondial Cino Del Duca, in 2005 the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) bestowed its Medallion for Scientific Achievement for only the fifth time in its history. In announcing Dr. Carpentier as the recipient, the AATS also noted that he is "one of the foremost medical philanthropists in the world, having established a premier cardiac center in Vietnam a decade ago where over 1,000 open-heart cases are now performed annually. In addition, he has founded cardiac surgery programs in 17 French-speaking countries in Africa."

In 2006, Dr. Carpentier received considerable media attention in the United States as the surgeon who performed an emergency mitral valve repair procedure on Charlie Rose when the PBS television interviewer fell ill while en route to Damascus to interview Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Writer Adam Gopnik, who authored a book about his five years living in Paris and is a personal friend of Charlie Rose, called Dr. Carpentier the most famous surgeon in France.