M. Irene Ferrer, 89, Cardiac Pioneer
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M. Irene Ferrer, who died November 12 at age 89, was a professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and director of the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital electrocardiographic lab. She played an important role on the team that developed the cardiac catheter, a piece of equipment critical to open-heart surgery and one that garnered a Nobel prize.
The catheter, which began as a research device, allows physicians to precisely monitor blood pressure and flow. The 1956 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two Columbia researchers and a German scientist for its development.
Ferrer later worked with IBM to make software improvements in the electrocardiogram that allowed non-specialists to interpret its results with relative ease.
Ferrer was born at Elberon, N.J., and grew on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was a debutante before earning her medical degree at Columbia, in 1941. In 1943, Ferrer became the first female chief resident in medicine at Bellevue Hospital, and she later credited the absence of male physicians, who were serving in the Armed Forces, for giving her the opportunity to specialize in cardiac medicine during this period.
Ferrer returned to Columbia in 1946 as an instructor and spent the remainder of her career there. She became a full professor in 1967. Ferrer also was for 33 years director of the electrocardiographic lab at Columbia-Presbyterian and held continuing appointments at Bellevue and Roosevelt Hospital. She also served as editor of Current Cardiology and the Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association.
Ferrer, who never married, is survived by her brother, Mel, an actor and director, and by her adopted daughter, Marianne Legato, professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.