Association of University Cardiologists
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Carl S. Apstein, M.D.
1941 - 2005
Apstein was a cardiologist with strong research interests and a long history of mentoring medical students. A faculty member since 1973, he founded BU's Cardiac Muscle Research Laboratory in 1978 and directed it until 2004.
Apstein's research centered on preventing cardiac cell death after a heart attack. His hypothesis that glucose, insulin, and potassium could protect the heart muscle when it is deprived of oxygen, as it is during the trauma of an attack, led to a procedure that is the subject of an ongoing NIH trial.
He is remembered by generations of BU medical students for his devotion to rigorous science and patient treatment and also for his warmth and wit. "He always had a huge smile and a joke," Emelia J. Benjamin, a MED professor of clinical cardiology, told the Boston Globe.
In 2004, Apstein received the Women in Cardiology Mentoring Award from the American Heart Association for his work with female cardiology students and residents. "After the award, male doctors came up to me and asked why the award was just for mentoring women," Benjamin said. "He mentored many men, too."
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Apstein graduated from Cornell University in 1963 and from New York University School of Medicine in 1967. He began playing the piano when he was fifty, taking classes at BU in music theory and piano and recording a CD of works by Bach and Chopin. "He was a man who was very intense and took everything he did seriously," his brother, Michael, told the Globe, "but he never took himself seriously."