Dwight E. Harken, the father of heart surgery and the creator of intensive care units for critically ill patients, died on Friday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 83 and lived in Cambridge.

The cause was pneumonia, his family said.

By removing bullets and shrapnel from the hearts of some 130 wounded soldiers in World War II without a single fatality, Dr. Harken became the world's first surgeon who had repeated success in operating on hearts.

In so doing, he shattered the medical myth of the heart as a organ so complex and vital that it was sacrosanct from surgical intervention. Before, only a handful of heart operations, usually in trauma cases like attempts to repair stab wounds, were performed.

"We discovered that the heart wasn't such a mysterious and untouchable thing after all," he said later.