William B. Kouwenhoven
William Bennett Kouwenhoven (born January 13, 1886 in Brooklyn , New York , † November 10, 1975 in Baltimore , Maryland ) was an American electrical engineer . He invented the defibrillator and made important contributions to cardiopulmonary resuscitation .
Life
Kouwenhoven studied at Brooklyn Polytechnic with a master’s degree in 1907 and received his doctorate from TH Karlsruhe in 1913 . He was from 1914 at Johns Hopkins University , where he became a professor of electrical engineering and was dean of his department from 1938 to 1954 . After retiring in 1954, he had a laboratory in the medical school at Johns Hopkins University and worked closely with medical professionals on cardiac arrest resuscitation techniques.
His experiments on this began in the 1930s with the neurologist Orthello Langworthy on rats. In 1933 they discovered that a second electric shock could make the heart beat again. They encouraged surgeons to use the technique and in 1947 Claude Beck succeeded in resuscitation after cardiac arrest during an operation.
The development of a defibrillator with a closed chest was carried out by Kouwenhoven at Johns Hopkins in the early 1950s in collaboration with physicians (James Jude, William Milnor, Samuel Talbot), engineers (G. Guy Knickerbocker) and with the support of the initially skeptical chief surgeon Alfred Blalock . The apparatus was first used in an operation at Johns Hopkins in 1957 and in 1960 on a patient who suffered cardiac arrest on examination. The attending physician Gottleib Friesinger fetched the apparatus (at that time a heavy device on wheels) from the university laboratory and was able to revive the patient with it.
The development of the defibrillator has been funded by electricity companies (Consolidated Edison of New York in the case of Johns Hopkins University) since the 1920s, as a rescue measure for workers who received an electric shock.
Kouwenhoven also made important contributions to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, CPR) by recognizing the effectiveness of external cardiac massage.
He was an IEEE Fellow and received the Edison Medal of the IEEE in 1961 . He received the Power Life Award and in 1973 the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research . In 1969 he became the first honorary doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1972 he received the AMA Scientific Achievement Award .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Janet Worthington The Engineer Who Could , Hopkins Medicine ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Kouwenhoven, JR Jude, GG Knickerbocker: Closed chest cardiac massage , Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 173, 1960; Page 1064-1067
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kouwenhoven, William B. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kouwenhoven, William Bennett |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American electrical engineer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 13, 1886 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brooklyn , New York |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 10, 1975 |
| Place of death | Baltimore , Maryland |