Join us for a conversation with Dr. Stuart Jamieson featuring his riveting memoir, Close to the Sun: The Journey of a Pioneer Heart Surgeon, a tale of four decades of advances in heart surgery.
The talk will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Copies of the book will be available for purchase from the UC San Diego Bookstore. This event is free and open to the public.
Jamieson has lived two lives. One began in heat and dust. Born to British expats in colonial Africa, Jamieson was sent at the age of eight to a local boarding school, where heartless instructors bullied and tormented their students. In the summers he escaped to fish on crocodile-infested rivers and explore the African bush. As a teenager, an apprenticeship with one of Africa’s most fabled trackers taught Jamieson how to deal with dangerous game and even more dangerous poachers, lessons that would later serve him well in the high-stakes career he chose.
Jamieson’s second life unfolded when he went to London to study medicine during the turbulent 1960s, leaving behind the only home he knew as it descended into revolution. Brilliant and self-assured, Jamieson advanced quickly in the still-new field of open-heart surgery. It was a fraught time. For patients with terminal heart disease, heart transplants were the new hope. But poor outcomes had all but ended the procedure.
Jamieson’s research at Stanford University in the late 1970s revolutionized heart transplants. His pioneering work on the anti-rejection drug cyclosporin would help to make heart transplantation a routine life-saving operation that is still in practice today as he continues to train the next generation of heart surgeons.
Dr. Jamieson is the Endowed Chair in Cardiothoracic Surgery, Distinguished Professor of Surgery, and Dean of Cardiovascular Affairs at UC San Diego.
Contact:
Mariah Fellows, (858) 534-0533, mfellows@ucsd.edu
Registration:
https://closetothesun.eventbrite.com