Wilfried F. H .M. Mommaerts; Heart Research Pioneer

Wilfried F. H .M. Mommaerts, whose research into cardiovascular disease and function led to new insights into the mechanisms of the heart as a muscle and not merely a pump, has died.

A spokesman at UCLA, where he was a former chairman and professor emeritus of the department of physiology, said Friday that Mommaerts was 76 when he died Feb. 7.

Mommaerts joined the UCLA faculty in 1956 as professor of medicine and physiology and director of the Los Angeles County Heart Research Laboratory at UCLA. He became chairman in 1966 and retired in 1987.

In the 1950s, Los Angeles first became recognized as a world center for heart surgery and science.

Mommaerts, born in the Netherlands, had done research in Europe where he studied under Nobel laureate A. Szent-Gyorgyi. In Los Angeles, Mommaerts changed the emphasis of physiological research of the heart, leading scientists to acknowledge that understanding of the heart will not be complete until it is fully understood as a muscle.

His honors included election to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Los Angeles County Heart Assn.’s Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award and the Alexander Von Humboldt award in 1985.