Born: August 8, 1914, Clinton, Ontario
Died: January 12, 1997
Education: M.D. - University of Toronto, 1937
Category: Applied Medical Research

Dr. William Thornton Mustard was born in Clinton, Ontario and graduated in medicine from the University of Toronto in 1937. After a distinguished career in the Canadian Army Medical Corps where he was awarded the Member of the British Empire (M.B.E.), he received further training in surgery in New York before returning to Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in 1947. In Toronto, he quickly championed the discipline of pediatric cardiovascular surgery pioneering the use of the heart lung machine in infants and greatly expanding the scope of surgery possible for the treatment of hereditary heart defects.

An innovative surgeon, he was the first to use prosthetic glass tubes in wounded arteries and in the repair of congenital defects early in infancy. He devised an operation used worldwide today and known as the "Mustard Operation" to correct a complex inborn error in "blue babies" in which the arteries and veins to and from the heart are switched so that they link up with the wrong heart chambers. Dr. Mustard's legacy as an innovator in pediatric cardiovascular surgery lives on as a result of the world renowned training centre that he established at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.