The first man to undergo a heart transplant operation in New England died Sunday afternoon after his Harvard doctors tried in vain to find him a third heart.

Gerald Boucher, age 44, of South Hadley, Mass., died from rejection of his second heart after doctors at the Harvard affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and the donor, a 38 year-old Connecticut nurse who died in an accident, gave him a $57,000 new lease on life 10 months ago.

No Improvement

"He never showed any improvement and intermittently rejected his heart throughout the 10 months," said presiding surgeon Gilbert H. Mudge, professor of surgery at the Medical School.

Although the exact cause of death had not been ascertained yesterday, Mudge said Boucher probably died after his heart muscle had weakened from his body's rejection of the new organ.

Harvard doctors at Brigham and Women's have since performed four other heart transplants and three of the recipients, including an 18-year-old, are healthy today, said Mudge.

Brigham and Women's is the only hospital in New England to have performed a heart transplant. Dozens of such transplants have been completed nationwide.

Boucher was readmitted to Brigham and Women's November 25 after the latest of rejection led his doctors to apply for a new heart, but he died before a donor organ could be located.

Nwither Mudge nor Brigham and Women's heart surgeon and Professor of Surgery Nicolas L. Tilney '58 could say why Bouener continued to reject his heart in spite of treatment with sophisticated immunosupressant drugs.

Most heart recipients gradually become accustomed to the new organ, the doctors said.

However, Tilney said at the time of the operation, only 50 percent of heart transplant recipients could be expected to survive. "There are too many variables to be able to predict whether or not a patient will accept the new heart, but Boucher was moribund; he would have died [much earlier] without the operation."

Mudge said Boucher's treatment was complicated by a kidney ailment caused by the large doses of drugs needed to supress his body's rejection of the heart.

"We just have to accept that there will be some successes and some failures," Mudge added.

But both his doctors and his widow maintain that the operation was "worth everything."

"I could not praise the surgeons at BWH enough," said Boucher's widow Elaine L'Abbee. "He [Boucher] had a happy an productive 10 months with his new heart and I think BWH is the best hospital in the world."

Mudge agreed, saying that Boucher enjoyed hunting and working after the transplant and would certainly have died much earlier without the operation