Michael DeBakey has been considered by many one of the parents of cardiovascular surgery thanks to his discoveries and inventions in the domain. The famous surgeon died Friday night of natural causes in the hospital where he worked most of his life, the Methodist Hospital in Huston. He was 99.

Michael DeBakey was born in Louisiana on September 7, 1908, in a Lebanese immigrant family. His father owned a pharmacy, and his mother was a seamstress. He decided to become a doctor because he was fascinated by the discussions among the doctors that visited his father’s pharmacy.

He graduated from Tulane University in 1932 and went on to further study medicine at the University of Strasbourg and University of Heidelberg. Upon returning to the United States he started teaching at the university he graduated from.

Michael DeBakey made his first invention while still a student at the Tulane University where he created what he called the roller pump which would later on be used as part of the heart-lung machine that allows open-heart surgery. He was also the first person to use a semi-artificial heart to keep a patient alive, and the person who first developed artificial arteries for bypass procedures, as well the first surgeon to perform a coronary bypass operation for clogged arteries.

Among the persons who were his patients there have been three presidents – Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, international political figures such as Boris Yeltsin, King Hussein of Jordan, and the Shah of Iran, entertainers as well as common people. According to the Associated Press, Mr. DeBakey once said about his patients that “once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar.”