In The News: Bill Cook, Medical Device Maker, Dies At 80

Bill Cook’s first business venture — selling shot glasses with pictures of nude women on the bottom — flopped. But that did not stop him from developing a sprawling company that has made thousands of medical devices, including heart stents, urological equipment and living-tissue transplants.

Along the way he amassed a $3.1 billion fortune, making him the 101st richest American in 2011, according to Forbes magazine. And yet he lived a modest life. He and his wife, Gayle, continued to live in the three-bedroom home they bought in 1967, having moved there from an apartment where they had used a spare bedroom to make a new sort of catheter.

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