August 20th
Born August 20, 1922; He died on August 9, 2007 at the age of 84.
Japanese surgeon who made the first artificial heart implanted to keep an animal alive. He kept a dog alive for 90 minutes on December 12, 1957. Thus, a new frontier for artificial heart development was opened for humans. Dr Denton Cooley had implanted the first artificial heart in a human in 1969, but Akutsu was on the team for the implantation of the second human artificial heart at THI in 1981.
