Dayton, Md. – After 76 years chock full of achievement, you might expect Robert Fischell to retire to his favorite place in the world – the northwest coast of the big island of Hawaii – and beat the old man’s pants off his contemporaries in bridge.
Instead Fischell – who has achieved pre-eminence in biomedicine and saved millions of lives with his inventions of the rechargeable pacemaker, the implantable insulin pump and a modern stent to open clogged arteries – is working 12-hour days up to seven days a week combating epileptic seizures, heart attacks and migraines.
In other words, don’t hold your breath for a retirement announcement.
“What I’ve found is when people retire, they die, so if I don’t, then I won’t,” Fischell said with a chuckle.
In addition to his continuing hands-on contributions, Fischell made a donation Dec. 19 that will allow new generations to continue his work long after he’s gone.
His gift of $30 million to the A. James Clark School of Engineering, along with $1 million collectively given by his three sons, will establish in the family name a bioengineering department as well as an institute for biomedical devices.
When University System Chancellor Brit Kirwan and engineering school Dean Nariman Farvidan approached Fischell to ask if he could help, the inventor said yes.
“I didn’t have anything better to do with that money,” he said.
“It’s a transformational gift,” university President Dan Mote told The Diamondback after the announcement.
“We’re at the beginning of a new era of engineering contributing to the quality of human life.”
Fischell’s rise to riches and success has emanated from such unlikely beginnings that Discover Magazine Editor in Chief Stephen Petranek said in a video tribute to Fischell that the inventor lived the “quintessential American story.”
After growing up in the Bronx with an immigrant father who didn’t make it past eighth grade and an immigrant mother who graduated high school, Fischell today is a world traveler with three degrees.
He attended Duke as an undergraduate (a transgression $30 million can forgive) and received a graduate degree in physics and an honorary doctorate from this university.
His career of inventions in spacecraft and medical devices has yielded him a handful of companies, dozens of awards, hundreds of patents and millions of dollars.
Rather than count his achievements as a life well-lived, Fischell sees a life with lots of living left.
“When you have a limited amount of time, as I do, you really want to try things that can affect the lives of millions of people rather than a few hundred thousand,” Fischell said. Therefore, he added, “We don’t work on improving ingrown toenails.”
Contact reporter Brendan Lowe at lowedbk@gmail.com.
