Adrian Kantrowitz (October 4, 1918 – November 14, 2008) was an American cardiac surgeon whose team performed the world's second heart transplant attempt (after Christiaan Barnard) at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York on December 6, 1967. The infant lived for only six hours. At a press conference afterwards, Kantrowitz emphasized that he considered the operation to have been a failure.Kantrowitz also invented the intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP), a left ventricular assist device (L-VAD), and an early version of the implantable pacemaker.In 1981, Kantrowitz became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.