EDMUND H. SONNENBLICK ’54

EDMUND H. SONNENBLICK, MD, 74, a cardiologist whose research formed the basis for the modern treatment of heart failure, died Sept. 22, 2007. He received his degree with high honors and with high distinction in chemistry, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and to Sigma Xi. After receiving his medical degree at Harvard University, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, he trained at Columbia University’s Presbyterian Hospital, continued his research at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md., and at Harvard University, and joined the Albert Einstein College of Medicine faculty in the Bronx, N.Y., where he was a distinguished university professor of medicine. His findings about the structure and function of heart muscle cells and how the heart muscle contracts and relaxes contributed to the development by others of a new class of lifesaving drugs, called ACE inhibitors. He and other researchers also adapted beta blockers for use in heart failure, and he was credited as the first to use an electron microscope to image heart muscle under scientifically controlled conditions. He received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American College of Cardiology in 1985, and this year the American Heart Association named him the recipient of one of its highest prizes, the Research Achievement Award. His daughter, Annie Sonnenblick ’80, for whom the Annie Sonnenblick Lecture/Distinguished Writer Series and the Annie Sonnenblick Writing Prize is named, predeceased him. He is survived by his wife, Linda Bland Sonnenblick; two daughters, including Charlotte Van Doren ’84; and five grandchildren, including Caroline Offit ’10.