Early Life and Education

Denton Arthur Cooley was born on August 22, 1920, in Houston, Texas, to Ralph Clarkson Cooley, a prominent local dentist, and Mary Augusta Fraley Cooley. His family enjoyed relative financial stability during the Great Depression due to his father’s successful practice, though Cooley’s relationship with his father was complicated by the elder Cooley’s alcoholism, which also affected his older brother. Cooley’s paternal grandfather, Daniel Denton Cooley, was a real estate developer who helped establish the Houston Heights neighborhood in the late 19th century. Raised in Houston’s Montrose area, young Denton attended local public schools, including Montrose Elementary, Sidney Lanier Junior High, and San Jacinto High School, where he excelled academically and athletically as a 6-foot-4-inch basketball player. He contributed to the school newspaper and graduated in 1937.

Cooley enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin on a basketball scholarship, majoring in zoology. He was a three-year letterman on the Longhorns basketball team, helping them win the 1939 Southwest Conference championship, and was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Texas Cowboys. Initially planning to follow his father into dentistry, Cooley shifted to pre-med after observing surgeries during college. He began medical studies at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston but transferred to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore after his first year. Influenced by the novel Miss Susie Slagle’s about life at Johns Hopkins, he graduated with an M.D. in 1944. There, under mentor Alfred Blalock, Cooley assisted in the first “blue baby” operation (Blalock-Taussig shunt) in 1944, a landmark procedure for congenital heart defects that ignited his passion for cardiac surgery.

Career and Medical Contributions

Cooley’s surgical training was interrupted by World War II service. In 1946, he joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps as chief of surgical services at a station hospital in Linz, Austria, and was discharged as a captain in 1948. He returned to Johns Hopkins to complete his residency and served as an instructor in surgery. In 1950, he trained under Russell Brock at London’s Royal Brompton Hospital, gaining expertise in closed-heart procedures.

In 1951, Cooley returned to Houston as an associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, working at The Methodist Hospital under Michael E. DeBakey. Together, they pioneered techniques for repairing aortic aneurysms, bypassing arteriosclerotic blockages in the legs and neck, and minimizing blood transfusions during heart-lung machine use. Cooley became renowned for his dexterity and speed in the operating room. In 1960, he shifted his practice to St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital while continuing to teach at Baylor. In 1962, he founded the Texas Heart Institute (THI) at St. Luke’s (now Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center), serving as its surgeon-in-chief and transforming it into a global leader in cardiovascular care, research, and education. He also consulted at Texas Children’s Hospital and held a clinical professorship at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston’s McGovern Medical School.

Cooley’s innovations revolutionized cardiac surgery. He performed over 100,000 open-heart operations, more than any surgeon in history, including thousands of valve replacements and bypasses. In 1968, he conducted the first successful human heart transplant in the United States. The following year, on April 4, 1969, he made medical history by implanting the first total artificial heart (a silicone model possibly developed by DeBakey’s team) into patient Haskell Karp, sustaining him for 64 hours until a donor heart was available—though Karp died 32 hours later. This “bridge to transplant” procedure, while controversial, advanced mechanical circulatory support. In 1978, Cooley implanted the first left ventricular assist device as a bridge to transplant, and in 1981, another total artificial heart. He specialized in pediatric cardiac surgery, performing the world’s first successful infant heart transplant in 1984 on Sara Remington at Texas Children’s Hospital, techniques still used today. Cooley authored or co-authored over 1,400 scientific papers and 12 books, including his 2012 memoir 100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon’s Memoir.

His career was not without challenges. The 1969 artificial heart implant sparked a bitter feud with DeBakey, who felt betrayed as it used an experimental device without permission; the rift lasted nearly 40 years until reconciliation in 2007. Investigations by the American College of Surgeons, National Heart Institute, and Baylor cleared Cooley of major wrongdoing but led to his 1969 resignation from Baylor. In 1988, amid a real estate downturn, Cooley filed for personal bankruptcy, citing debts despite his estimated $40 million net worth earlier; he recovered financially through his practice. He performed his last surgery at age 87 and continued consulting until his death.

Personal Life

Cooley married Louise Goldsborough Thomas in 1949; they had five daughters: Mary, Louise, Helen, Claire, and Sharon. The family faced tragedy in 1985 when daughter Helen died by suicide. Cooley was a devoted family man, balancing his intense career with hobbies like golf (played for 68 years), tennis, and reading historical fiction and biographies. An avid basketball fan, he credited the sport with teaching him resilience. From 1965 to the early 1970s, he played upright bass in a swing band called The Heartbeats. Known for his wit—once quipping under oath that he was “the best heart surgeon in the world”—Cooley was also generous, donating to biomedical research, medical schools, museums, and civic causes. Facilities named after him include the Denton A. Cooley Pavilion at UT Austin, the Denton A. Cooley Student Center at Johns Hopkins, and the Denton A. Cooley Building at THI. In 2000, he reviewed Dick Cheney’s medical records at George W. Bush’s request.

Awards, Honors, and Legacy

Cooley received over 120 honors, including the René Leriche Prize (1967) from the International Surgical Society, calling him “the most valuable surgeon of the heart and blood vessels anywhere in the world”; the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1984) from Ronald Reagan; and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1998) from Bill Clinton. He was the first non-Russian recipient of Russia’s Bakoulev Premium for cardiovascular surgery and held honorary degrees from eight universities and fellowships from five Royal Colleges of Surgery. He served as president of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and was a Past Governor of the American College of Surgeons.

In 1972, his trainees founded the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society, now with over 900 members from 50+ countries, honoring his mentorship. Cooley’s rivalry with DeBakey, though contentious, elevated Houston’s Texas Medical Center to a global hub for cardiac innovation. His motto—”modify, simplify, and apply”—guided his approach. He donated his papers, videos, and library to the Texas Medical Center Library for future study.

Death

Denton Cooley died on November 18, 2016, at his Houston home at age 96, from complications of heart failure. He was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. Tributes poured in, with Christiaan Barnard once calling his surgeries “the most beautiful… every moment had purpose and aim.” Cooley’s legacy endures as a pioneer who saved countless lives and inspired generations in cardiovascular medicine.