Michael DeBakey, a heart surgeon whose world-shattering heart transplants and coronary bypass surgical procedures made him one of the noteworthy physicians of 20th century medicine, died Friday night at the age of 99.

The well-known doctor died of natural causes at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, according to a statement released on Saturday morning by the Baylor College of Medicine and Methodist Hospital, where Michael DeBakey was chancellor emeritus.

In a career that reached over seven decades, the skillful heart surgeon reinvented numerous surgeries and operations that today are customary in the care of heart ailments and led many to consider him as the father of modern cardiovascular surgery.

His most prominent contribution to medicine was the now-standard coronary bypass procedure for clogged arteries, which he first performed in 1964, using leg veins in order to bypass hindered or damaged areas between the aorta and the coronary arteries.

An untiring expert and adamant taskmaster, Michael DeBakey accomplished more than 60,000 heart surgeries throughout his career and had very influential characters of history as his patients: presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Turkish President Turgut Ozal and Nicaraguan leader Violetta Chamorro.

Born to Lebanese immigrants on September 7, 1908, in Lake Charles, La., Michael DeBakey’s concern towards medicine expanded while taking part at the dialogues physicians were having at his father’s pharmacy. Moreover, he was still a student at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1932 when he conceived the roller pump, which is a key constituent of the heart-lung machine that helped smooth the progress of open-heart surgery.

Michael DeBakey's first spuse, Diana Cooper DeBakey, died of a heart attack in 1972. He is survived by his second wife, Katrin Fehlhaber, their daughter, and two of his four sons from his first marriage.