Dr. Jesse Edwards

Dr. Jesse E. Edwards, a cardiologist who established one of the world's largest collections of hearts to help the study of heart disease, died Sunday of heart failure, his daughter said. He was 96. Edwards, a cardiac pathologist, was one of a group of Minnesota pioneers in cardiac surgery and medicine who revolutionized the study and treatment of heart problems, said Dr. Victor Tschida, medical director of the Nasseff Heart Center at United Hospital in St. Paul and a former student of Edwards. Edwards, a Massachussetts native, graduated from Tufts Medical School and went on to serve as commander in chief of the Central Medical Laboratories of the European Theater during World War II, where he was part of a war crimes team that went into Dachau Concentration Camp three days after the allies liberated it. In 1946, Edwards went to work at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where in the early 1950s he was a member of the first open heart surgery team. In 1960 he departed for the University of Minnesota, where he taught for many years, and Miller Hospital in St. Paul, now United Hospital. It was there that he established what is now known as the Jesse E. Edwards Registry of Cardiovascular Disease, which now contains more than 22,000 hearts sent for study from physicians around the world. It's one of the largest collections of its kind and a tremendous resource in the study of heart ailments, Tschida said.