Eugene Braunwald (August 15, 1929 – April 22, 2026) was an Austrian-born American cardiologist. He was a “groundbreaking cardiologist whose research helped transform heart disease from a near-certain killer into a condition often manageable with medications, procedures and careful monitoring”. His career was described as one of “contributions [that] were conceptual and practical.”
Eugene Braunwald was editor of the cardiology textbook Braunwald's Heart Disease, which is now in its 13th edition and was first published in 1980, a standard text for cardiologists. His long career included research reports in the last year of his life. He published extensively, 1,600 publications beginning with his first in 1954, and shared knowledge readily including as a teacher.
The American Heart Association has called him the father of cardiology. He responded by saying: "I was in the right place at the right time, with the right collaborators, the right mentors and mentees."
Braunwald was born to Jewish parents Wilhelm Braunwald and Clara Wallach in Vienna. He obtained his A.B. and M.D. at New York University, then completed his residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
He was inspired to pursue a career in cardiology after practicing in the Bellevue Cardiology Clinic, under Ludwig Eichna, during his time as a medical student at New York University. He also attended several cardiology courses in Mexico City, at the National Institute of Cardiology. He always thought that the Mexican School of Cardiology was above any other. "We have the technology, but they have the practice. The best book of cardiology is the patient itself", he always argued.
In 1952, Braunwald married Nina Starr, a thoracic surgeon and medical researcher, with whom he had three children, daughters Karen, Allison, and Jill. Nina Starr Braunwald died in 1992. In 1994, he married his second wife, Elaine Smith, formerly a senior hospital administrator. Braunwald died in Newton, Massachusetts on April 22, 2026, at the age of 96.
Braunwald served as chief of cardiology and clinical director at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. During his tenure at the National Heart Institute, Braunwald's closest collaborator in the foundational work on cardiac muscle mechanics was Edmund Sonnenblick, with whom he and John Ross Jr. co-authored a landmark series of papers in the early 1960s that established the clinical framework of preload, afterload, and contractility.
He was then recruited to the University of California, San Diego, where from 1968 to 1972 he was the founding Chair of the Department of Medicine, bringing John Ross Jr. with him to be the founding Chief of Cardiology. He has since been at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he served from 1972 to 1996 as Chair of the Department of Medicine.
Of the top 25 biomedical scientists whose work is cited most often by other scientists, nearly half have held appointments in this one department, most becoming members of the Department during Braunwald’s tenure as Chair. That means about 100 of the over 200 academic medical centers in the United States, alone, containing tens of thousands of scientists, are staffed by Braunwald’s students and colleagues.
Braunwald's contributions have been recognized by his election as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the creation of a permanently endowed chair in his name by Harvard Medical School, and the establishment of the annual academic mentorship award by the American Heart Association.
Braunwald died at age 96 in April 2026, in a hospital in Newton, Massachusetts. At the time of his death, he lived in Weston, Massachusetts. He was survived by his second wife Elaine Smith, and the three daughters of his first marriage to Nina Starr Braunwald, and by grandchildren and great grandchildren.
In 1966, he was awarded the Jacobi Medallion by the Mount Sinai Alumni (Mount Sinai Hospital) "for distinguished achievement in the field of medicine or extraordinary service to the Hospital, the School, or the Alumni."
In 1986, he received the Distinguished Scientist Award from American College of Cardiology.
In 2001, Braunwald received the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize.
In 2002, Braunwald received the King Faisal Prize for Medicine. He shared the prize with co-laureate Professor Finn Waagstein.
In 2004, he became the inaugural winner of the Libin/AHFMR Prize for Excellence in Cardiovascular Research.
In 2009, he was chairman of a policy group that severely limited outside pay for Harvard physicians.
In 2010, he received an honorary degree from the University of Rochester.