Remembering Kanu Chatterjee

On March 4, 2015, Kanu Chatterjee, MBBS, a beloved physician, cardiologist, healer, teacher, and charismatic mentor, passed away peacefully in Iowa City, Iowa, after a brief battle with cancer. His passing has created an irretrievable loss for the field of cardiovascular medicine, because he was the essence of a clinician-teacher-investigator. Kanu was soft-spoken, kind, and wise; he was a practitioner of extraordinary skill, and spiritual. We were privileged to know this gentle giant of cardiology.Dr Kanu Chatterjee was born in Bangladesh, India, and received his medical degree from the R. G. Kar Medical College, Calcutta, India, while still living in a refugee camp in Calcutta. He moved to England in 1963, where he completed additional training in medicine and cardiology at St. George’s Hospital and the Royal Brompton Hospital, earning membership in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and London. Kanu rapidly established his reputation as a brilliant clinical cardiologist.In 1970, at the urging of 2 cardiologists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Howard Allen, MD, and Harvey Alpern, MD, whom he met at St. Georges Hospital in London) as well as Graham Miller, PhD, of London, H. J. C. Swan, MD, then the director of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai, recruited Kanu to join …