Isaac Starr

Isaac "Jack" Starr (March 6, 1895 – June 22, 1989), known as the father of ballistocardiography, was an American physician, heart disease specialist, and clinical epidemiologist notable for developing the first practical ballistocardiograph. His early academic positions included being an assistant professor in pharmacology and later the first Hartzell Professor of Research Therapeutics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Education Starr attended primary and secondary school in Philadelphia, graduating from the Chestnut Hill Academy in 1912. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1920. The most notable use, however, was that of detecting heart abnormalities much earlier and more accurately in patients, leading to further development and extensive contributions to the field from 1930 to 1960.

Before the redesign, however, in 1936, Starr had secured records on multiple healthy people, namely medical students, faculty, friends, and family members. Over the next 40 years, he would study his subjects and eventually report a clinical series on them, detailing such observations as, "Patients with clinical evidence of ischemic heart disease who also had abnormal BCGs developed twice as many recurrences as did those having ischemic heart disease and normal records."

Awards Albert Lasker Award of the American Heart Association (1957) "for fundamental contributions to knowledge of the heart and the circulation, and for his development of the first practical ballistocardiograph" Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians (1967) Burger Medal of the Free University of Amsterdam (1977)

Selected publications