Helen B. Taussig

Helen Brooke Taussig (May 24, 1898 - May 20, 1986) was an American cardiologist, working in Baltimore and Boston, who founded the field of pediatric cardiology. Notably, she is credited with developing the concept for a procedure that would extend the lives of children born with Tetrology of Fallot (also known as blue baby syndrome). This concept was applied in practice as a procedure known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt. The procedure was developed by Dr. Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, who were Taussig's colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Helen B. Taussig was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father was Harvard economist Frank W. Taussig, and her mother Edith Thomas was one of the first students at Radcliffe College. When...