15 Facts About Michel Mirowski

Michel Mirowski was a physician who helped develop the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in the fall of 1939, his father renamed him as Mieczyslaw Michel Mirowski to try to protect him from the anti-Semitism of the time.

Michel Mirowski emigrated to Palestine, but no medical schools were operating there in the early post-war years.

Michel Mirowski returned to Europe to seek training and entered the medical school at Lyon, France, in the fall of 1947.

Michel Mirowski's French was poor, and his English almost non-existent.

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Michel Mirowski listened to the lectures and demonstrations in French and studied medical texts in English as he taught himself both languages.

Michel Mirowski wondered what could have been done to prevent his mentor's death.

Michel Mirowski reasoned that it should be possible to implant a defibrillator in the body that would convert arrhythmias when they occurred.

Michel Mirowski consulted cardiologists who knew more about such devices.

Michel Mirowski decided that only in the United States could he find the funds and technical support for the project that was becoming almost an obsession for him.

Since then, the device Michel Mirowski invented, much improved and further miniaturized, has been installed in millions of patients.

Michel Mirowski received invitations to write more articles and give more lectures than he could accept.

When he spoke overseas, Michel Mirowski usually lectured in English, but he often discussed his papers during the question-and-answer period in the language of the country he was visiting.

Michel Mirowski spoke French, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish fluently, but he never learned Italian and refused to learn German.

Michel Mirowski was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for co-inventing with Morton Mower the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator in the 1960s after his mentor died of a heart arrhythmia.