Dr. Trout also designed some of the earliest heart-lung machines and, in 1963, performed one of the earliest dual valve replacements using artificial heart valves, his family said.

In the 1960s, he traveled with a nursing team, demonstrating the new techniques at international conferences on open-heart surgery.

Born in Marietta, Ohio, and raised in Columbus, he was the son of Horatio and Lorella Crouse Trout.

Dr. Trout's father, a vocational-ed teacher, instilled in him an interest in tools and gadgets, and a thirst for knowledge about how things worked.

He became a woodworker, amateur plumber, electrician, carpenter, and painter, and took these skills with him to Ohio Wesleyan University and later into the operating room. He graduated in 1945 and earned a medical degree from Hahnemann University in 1947.

After medical school, he completed postgraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and received a master of science degree in surgery in 1949.

On May 28, 1949, the day after two weeks of finals, he married Anne Hockenberry. The two had met at Hahnemann, where she did social work.

Dr. Trout served in the Navy Reserve from 1942 to 1949. During the Korean War, he was called to active duty as a lieutenant junior grade, serving as a medical officer and participating in the landing at Inchon. He was honorably discharged as a lieutenant senior grade in 1954.

He was awarded the World War II Victory Medal, American Theater, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, and the Korean Campaign (3 stars) United Nations Medal.

The publishing house McGraw-Hill asked Dr. Trout to write a book on open-heart surgery. In 1959, The Practical Evaluation of Surgical Heart Disease was published.

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Robert Gates Trout, 90, a pioneer in open-heart surgery