Peter M. Guida*

Peter Guida was born in 1927 in New York City and was the son of a chauffeur who later became a security guard. He wanted to be a doctor from the time he was six, when he went for a checkup. "I was extremely impressed by the doctor's quiet efficiency," he says.

Realizing the financial struggle that a medical education would entail, Guida's family tried to steer him toward electronics, a field in which he seemed gifted. The enterprising Guida worked constantly at a variety of jobs from the time he was a child, and graduated as senior class president and valedictorian.

As a scholarship student at Long Island University, Guida finished his pre-med courses in record time and went on to received his medical degree from Albany Medical College. One of the things he did to pay his way through medical school was to work as a jet engine inspector for the old Curtiss-Wright Company in New Jersey. During World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 17, and a year later he was flying fighter planes off the aircraft carrier Essex in the South Pacific.

Guida combined his aptitude for mechanics with his medical skills to advance the cause of cardiovascular surgery. He designed and built New York's first open-heart lung machine. During 1959 and 1960, he and two other surgeons performed the city's first 274 open-heart surgeries in the city. He was an associate professor of surgery and associate attending surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center for more than 60 years before retiring in 2005.

In 1984, Guida received the Italian Legion of Merit award. He was knighted in the Order of the Holy Sepulcher, a papal appointment, in 1985, and he became a knight in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in 1986.