John C. Norman Jr., MD, Class of 1954

Graduated Harvard Medical School Class of 1954

John C. Norman, MD (1930-2014) was born on May 11, 1930 in Charleston, West Virginia. He entered Howard University at age 16 and transferred to Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1950. He completed his medical degree in 1954. Following an internship and residency at Presbyterian Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital in New York, he joined the U.S. Navy, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander. He completed his cardiac surgical training at the University of Michigan and in 1962 was a National Institutes of Health fellow at the University of Birmingham, England.

Dr. Norman became an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, and undertook research projects involving organ transplantation. This work led him to the Texas Heart Institute in 1972, where he worked on developing the first abdominal left ventricular assist device. He later worked at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey, and then as chairman of the surgery department at Marshall University School of Medicine. 

Dr. Norman also organized the 1969 "Medicine in the Ghetto" in the New England Journal of Medicine that same year.

His papers are available through the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Dr. Norman's full oral history is available to researchers at the Center for the History of Medicine. Contact chm@hms.harvard.edu for more information.

"Being a student, I always said, regardless of where you are, or from whom you are, you could come to Harvard College or Harvard Medical School for that matter, and find someone of similar background, and form a solidarity, and that your standards would be raised forever, as they are today." 

Year
1954
Faculty Member
Off
School Timeline
HMS
Interview
On