Ruth Gattiker

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Ruth Ida Gattiker (born May 22, 1923 in Zurich ) is a Swiss anesthetist . She was one of the first professors of medicine at the University of Zurich .

Life

Ruth Gattiker is the elder of two daughters of Paul Gattiker (1881–1961) and Bertha Gattiker-Frischknecht (1888–1975) and grew up in Oerlikon on the outskirts of Zurich . Because her father was against her going to high school, she graduated from the commercial school of the Zurich secondary school and passed the commercial school-leaving exam in 1943. She then succeeded in ensuring that she could do a cantonal Matura with an additional year at a private school . She wanted to be a doctor, but her father was against it. In addition, she lacked a federal Matura. In 1944 she began studying mathematics at the University of Zurich. Because the desire to become a doctor remained, she secretly passed the federal Matura after five semesters and matriculated for medicine. The father then gave up his resistance.

From 1946 she studied medicine. In 1951 she spent a semester at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1952 she passed the federal medical state examination in Zurich and received her doctorate in 1953 from the University of Lausanne , where she worked as a research assistant until 1955. Then she moved to the hospital of the Swiss School of Nursing in Zurich as an assistant doctor for surgery . On the advice of the local chief surgeon Marie Lüscher - at that time the only chief physician in Switzerland - she gave up the desire to become a surgeon. She assumed that as a woman she had too few opportunities for advancement in male-dominated surgery and concentrated on the then still new subject of anesthesiology .

In 1956 she moved to the Zurich Cantonal Hospital as an assistant doctor for anesthesia, and in 1960 she became a senior physician. In 1961, the Swedish heart surgeon Åke Senning became head of Surgical Clinic A at the Zurich Cantonal Hospital and Ruth Gattiker was one of his closest collaborators. She specialized in cardiac anesthesia and Senning advanced her academic career. 1963/1964 she worked at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (Minnesota) with John Webster Kirklin . In 1969 she took part in the first Swiss heart transplant carried out by Åke Senning. In the same year, she submitted her habilitation thesis on Anesthesia in Cardiac Surgery . Ruth Gattiker was a pioneer in her field and the book became a standard work.

In 1976 she became a senior physician and received the title of adjunct professor at the University of Zurich. She was one of the first female professors at the medical faculty and, together with the ophthalmologist Anne-Catherine Martenet, the first to come out of clinical practice and pursue an academic career. In 1986 Ruth Gattiker retired. From 1995 to 2006, she completed a degree in musicology and philosophy at the University of Zurich.

Honors

  • 2006: Honorary member of the Swiss Society for Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation (SGAR).
  • In 2018, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) launched the Stern-Gattiker Prize, named after Lina Stern , the first female professor of medicine at the University of Geneva, and after Ruth Gattiker. The award honors female role models in academic medicine.

literature

  • Denise Schmid : Ruth Gattiker. Cardiac anesthesia pioneer. Here and now, Baden 2016.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gattiker, Ruth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gattiker, Ruth Ida (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss anesthetist
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich