H. Ungerleider; Pioneer in Transplants

Harry E. Ungerleider, a cardiologist whose work with a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s and ‘40s helped lead to the first human heart transplants, died Wednesday at a Fullerton hospital.

Dr. Ungerleider was 93 and had moved to California from the East when he retired 19 years ago.

Ungerleider, a physician with American troops in France during World War I, was a delegate from Philadelphia to the first American Legion convention--on Nov. 11, 1919, in Minneapolis, one year after the end of WWI.

He received his medical degree at the Medico Chirurgical College in Philadelphia in 1916. At the University of Minnesota he and other cardiologists managed to hook up the hearts of animals outside their bodies while sustaining life.

Ungerleider also was involved with the development of artificial aortas and the methodology of sizing the human heart.

In later years he was medical director of Equitable Life Insurance Co. and other insurance firms. An outgrowth of his work then was the development of portable X-ray units.

He is survived by his wife, Marian, two daughters and four grandchildren.