Everything about Willem Johan Kolff totally explained
Dr.
Willem Johan (Pim) Kolff (born
February 14,
1911) is a pioneer of
hemodialysis as well as in the field of
artificial organs.
The Netherlands
Born in
Leiden,
Netherlands, Kolff studied
medicine in his hometown at
Leiden University, and continued as a resident in
internal medicine at
Groningen University. One of his first patients here was a 22-year old man who was slowly dying of
renal failure. This prompted Kolff to perform research on artificial renal function replacement. Also during his residency, Kolff organised the first
blood bank in Europe (in
1940).
During
World War II, he was based in
Kampen, where he was active in the
resistance against the German occupation. Simultaneously, Kolff developed the first functioning artificial kidney. He treated his first patient in 1943, and in 1945 he was first able to save a patient's life with hemodialysis treatment. In 1946 he obtained a PhD degree at
University of Groningen on the subject. It marks the start of a treatment that has saved the lives of millions of
acute or
chronic renal failure patients ever since.
USA
Shortly afterwards - in
1950 - he left the Netherlands, sensing opportunity in the USA. At the
Cleveland Clinic, he was involved in the development of
heart-lung machines to maintain heart and pulmonal function during cardiac surgery. He also improved on his dialysis machine.
He became head of the
University of Utah's Division of Artificial Organs and Institute for Biomedical Engineering in 1967, where he was involved in the development of the
artificial heart, the first of which was implanted in
1982.
Impact
Kolff has to be considered as the Father of Artificial Organs, and is now regarded one of the most important physicians of the twentieth century. He obtained more than 12 honorary doctorates at universities all over the world, and more than 120 international rewards, among them the
AMA Scientific Achievement Award in 1982, the
Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2002, and the
Russ Prize in 2003. He was a co- nominee with
William H. Dobelle for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003.
Further Information
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