Dr. Ann Mirabile Lees of Chilmark, a medical doctor, scientific researcher, and poet, died on July 8, 2026, in Boston. She was 91 years old.
Dr. Lees was born in Hartford, Conn., the daughter of Dr. Charles S. Mirabile, a urologist, and Dr. Ethel M. (MacLean) Mirabile, a pediatrician. She graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in political science in 1957, and earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1961. She subsequently had a long and distinguished career in academic medicine, performing groundbreaking research into the causes of heart disease, publishing numerous articles in medical journals, and serving as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
Early in her career, Dr. Lees worked at the National Heart Institute of the National Institutes of Health, studying lipid metabolism. Later, working alongside her husband, cardiologist and MIT professor Dr. Robert S. Lees, she was the scientific leader of the first large trial of statin drugs, and pursued foundational research into understanding the chemical process that causes arterial plaque formation, obtaining several patents.
In 1991, Dr. Lees and her husband founded the Boston Heart Foundation, an independent clinical and research institution where they cared for numerous long-term patients and advanced the study of heart disease.
In addition to her medical research, Dr. Lees actively engaged with many civic and political causes. At the League of Women Voters, she helped lead the Local Education Study of the Brookline Public Schools in the early 1970s. More recently, Dr. Lees was a regular participant in local pro-democracy activities.
After retiring from her research career, Dr. Lees turned her attention to writing poetry, with wide-ranging subjects including nature, the passage of time, and in the words of one of her reviewers, “the community of all living things.” Her work appeared in several anthologies and in two books.
She is survived by her brother, Charles S. Mirabile Jr.; four children; five grandchildren; and a large extended family.
