By Linda Grace-Kobas
Wilson Greatbatch '50, whose invention of the implantable cardiac pacemaker is estimated to have saved three million lives since first used in 1960, was awarded the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award by the Lemelson-MIT Prize Program administered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The announcement was made April 11 at the New York Academy of Sciences by MIT economist Lester C. Thurow, who chairs the prize board that oversees the selection process.
Greatbatch was honored that evening at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., with genetic engineers Stanley Cohen of Stanford University and Herbert W. Boyer of the University of California at San Francisco, who won the 1996 Lemelson-MIT Prize for American invention and innovation.
"These winners demonstrate American ingenuity at its finestfinding new solutions that build companies and create jobs," Thurow said.
Greatbatch's inventions he holds 150 patents have resulted in nine new
companies, including Medtronics, Inc., the world's
top producer of therapeutic implantable devices with sales of $1.4 billion in 1994,
and Wilson Greatbatch Ltd. in Clarence, N.Y., which employs 570 people and
recently announced a $6 million expansion. Greatbatch is president and CEO
of Greatbatch Gen-Aid Ltd., which is conducting AIDS research.
He is a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Aerospace Hall of Fame.
A fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, Greatbatch has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical articles, book chapters and one book. His implantable cardiac pacemaker was chosen by the National Society of Professional Engineering in 1983 as one of the 10 greatest engineering contributions to society in the past 50 years.
Greatbatch springs from a modest background. Born in Buffalo in 1919, son of a grocer and small home repair contractor, he served in the Navy during World War II as a rear gunner in carrier-based dive bombers and then studied electrical engineering at Cornell, graduating in 1950 ("the second GI Bill class," he says).
He had three of his five children as a Cornell student, and he worked several jobs at once to support his family. He ran the WHCU transmitter overnight, sitting in a cold building on top of a hill; he worked at the Psychology Department's Animal Behavior Farm in Varna, where he says he learned physiology; and he built amplifiers for instrumentation involved in the Arecibo radiotelescope project.
After leaving Cornell, Greatbatch went to the State University of New York at Buffalo to earn a master's degree in electrical engineering, and while there conducted experiments at the Buffalo Veterans Administration Hospital that led to the development of the implantable pacemaker.
He has maintained close ties with Cornell, serving on the University Council and as an adjunct professor of engineering. He has conducted research with the College of Veterinary Medicine and with John C. Sanford, associate professor at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, with whom he earned a patent for work in stopping reproduction of a virus similar to HIV in cats.
Now a grandfather of five, Greatbatch lives with his wife, Eleanor, in Clarence, where they farm a half-acre garden, can and freeze their harvest and make their own dyes for fabric.
His Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Foundation has funded the purchase and restoration of historical buildings, awarded grants to senior center homes and town parks and created an engineering wing at Houghton College.
Commenting on his latest prize, Greatbatch said: "Just immerse yourself in the problem and work hard. The true reward is not in the results but in the doing."