Ellsworth Edwin Wareham (October 3, 1914 – December 15, 2018)[1][2] was an American cardiothoracic surgeon and centenarian from Loma Linda, California who promoted the health benefits of plant-based nutrition.

[6] Leonard Bailey, the surgeon who transplanted a baboon heart into a baby at Loma Linda University in 1984, trained under Wareham as a medical student in the late 1960s.

The child, Baby Fae, was born prematurely with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and Bailey's surgery made international headlines.

Wareham is believed to have performed the first open heart surgery in Pakistan in the early 1960s when he headed a good will mission sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

The charitable efforts of his team garnered praise from two U.S. Presidents (Johnson and Nixon), as well as the King of Greece and Saudi Arabian Royalty.

Loma Linda, Wareham's home town has been described as USA's only Blue Zone, an area where the longevity is appreciably higher than the national average and one of the four places in the world to have a substantial proportion of humans live past 100 years.