Dickinson Woodruff Richards

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Dickinson Woodruff Richards (born October 30, 1895 in Orange , New Jersey , † February 23, 1973 in Lakeville , Connecticut ) was an American internist . In 1956, Richards received, together with Werner Forßmann and André Frédéric Cournand, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries about cardiac catheterization and the pathological changes in the circulatory system ”.

life and work

Richards was the son of a New York lawyer and his mother came from a family of doctors. He studied English and Greek from 1913 at Yale University in New Haven (Connecticut) with a bachelor's degree in 1917. He then did his military service until 1919 as an artillery officer in the US Army in France. Back in the United States, he studied medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City with an MA in Physiology in 1922 and a PhD in 1923.

He was at Columbia University, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (and taught at Columbia University), where after a year-long stay at the Institute of Medical Research in London, he did research with Henry Dale on the physiology of blood circulation. He worked with Lawrence Henderson from Harvard and from around 1931 with the French André Cournand at Bellevue Hospital in New York. He was also a consultant to Merck, Sharpe and Dohme in New Jersey from 1935 and edited the Merck Manual.

Cournand and Richards studied various cardiovascular ailments and used right heart catheterization to investigate various diseases. In 1945 Cournand published an article on the measurement of cardiac output with the help of cardiac catheter examinations, and together with Richards they both worked on using the Fick principle developed by Adolf Fick to determine cardiac output and to examine pulmonary circulation . They use the method, for example, to examine traumatic shock, the effects of heart medication and heart diseases, their treatment and their diagnosis. They optimized the catheterization and explored its possible applications first in animal experiments on dogs and chimpanzees and later also on humans. By the end of the 1930s, they were able to identify complex and previously unknown heart defects and enable treatment. They introduced the scientifically determined method of measuring cardiac output with the help of the right heart catheter into clinical medicine, where it quickly established itself as the standard method. Together with the imaging angiocardiography , the catheter examination enabled comprehensive diagnostics of the heart and, based on this, modern cardiology . In 1945 Richards became professor at Columbia University and director of the first division ( Columbia Division ) at Bellevue Hospital and in 1947 he became Lambert Professor of Medicine at Columbia University.

In 1961 he retired. He was married to Constance Burrell Riley since 1931 and had four daughters.

Honors and memberships

In 1963 Richard became a Knight of the Legion of Honor . In 1958 he was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences . Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1967. In 1970 he received the George M. Kober Medal .

literature

  • Bernhard Kupfer: Richards, Dickinson Woodruff , in: Lexicon of Nobel Prize Winners. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001, ISBN 3-491-72451-1 , p. 261 f.
  • Dickinson W. Richards , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 11/1973 of March 5, 1973, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ André Frédéric Cournand: Control of the Pulmonary Circulation in Man with Some Remarks on Methodology. Nobel lecture on December 11, 1956. Full text
  2. ^ Richards, Dickinson Woodruff In: Bernhard Kupfer: Lexicon of Nobel Prize Winners. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001; Pp. 261-262. ISBN 3-491-72451-1 .
  3. ^ A b Cournand, André Frédéric In: Bernhard Kupfer: Lexicon of Nobel Prize Winners. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001; Pp. 206-207. ISBN 3-491-72451-1 .
  4. ^ Forßmann, Werner Theodor Otto In: Bernhard Kupfer: Lexicon of Nobel Prize Winners. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2001; P. 221. ISBN 3-491-72451-1 .
  5. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter R. (PDF; 508 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved February 24, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Richards, Dickinson Woodruff
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richards, Dickinson W.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American internist
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Orange , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH 23rd February 1973
Place of death Lakeville , Connecticut