Nina Starr Braunwald

Nina Starr Braunwald was an American thoracic surgeon and medical researcher who was among the first women to perform open-heart surgery. She was also the first woman to be certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, and the first to be elected to the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. In 1960, at the age of 32, she led the operative team at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) that implanted the first successful artificial mitral human heart valve replacement, which she had designed and fabricated.