Willem johan kolff inventions
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Dr. Kolff working on an artificial heart prototype at the University of Utah Division of Artificial Organs (P0343un36a_01_001)
Dr. Willem Johan Kolff was known as the “Father of Artificial Organs.” He became internationally known in 1957, when he began working on the total artificial heart at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, but his contributions to the field of artificial organs and to the betterment of the lives of millions of people began long before that time.
Born February 14, 1911, in Leyden, The Netherlands, Dr. Kolff obtained his M.D. at Leyden Medical School, and went to the University of Groningen for his residency in medicine. He started working on the artificial kidney in 1939, and became the first internist at a small hospital in Kampen, where he continued the work on the artificial kidney even after the Germans occupied Holland in 1940. The prototype for his kidney dialysis machine was made from sausage casings and a water pump salvaged from an auto. The rotating drum kidney was developed in 1941, and by 1955 the twin-coil kidney had led to the possibility of dialy
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KOLFF, WILLEM J.
KOLFF, WILLEM J., “Pim,” (14 February 1911-11 February 2009) was a prominent medical surgeon and inventor whose work on the artificial kidney, lung, and heart earned him the title “The Father of Artificial Organs.” Kolff served as the founding president of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs from 1955 to 1956 and as the founder and director of the Cleveland Clinic’s first hospital-based kidney dialysis program. After leaving the Cleveland Clinic in 1967, Kolff worked at the University of Utah, where he continued to lead innovation in the fields of nephrology and cardiology.
Born in Leiden, Netherlands, Kolff became interested in the field of medicine at an early age. His father, Jacob Kolff, was the director of a tuberculosis sanatorium and inspired him to enter the field of medicine. Kolff earned his M.D. at the University of Leiden in 1937. Kolff went on to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Groningen; however, his educational career came to a halt when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940. Kolff created continental Europe’s firs
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Willem J. Kolff
Physician
Willem Johan Kolff, Dutch-born American physician (born Feb. 14, 1911, Leiden, Neth.—died Feb. 11, 2009, Newtown Square, Pa.), was a pioneering biomedical engineer who invented the kidney dialysis machine and led the medical team that on Dec. 2, 1982, implanted the first artificial human heart in Barney Clark. After earning an M.D. (1938) from the University of Leiden, Kolff received a Ph.D. (1946) from the University of Groningen. During World War II he began work on creating the first artificial kidney, using sausage casings; this early effort paved the way for the creation of the first dialysis machine, which cleansed the blood of patients experiencing kidney failure. After immigrating (1950) to the U.S., he joined the Cleveland Clinic Foundation that same year; he retook his medical examinations and became a U.S. citizen. In 1956 he devised a membrane oxygenator used in bypass surgery. His first artificial heart was implanted in a dog in 1957 and kept the animal alive for 90 minutes. Kolff was a founding member of the American Socie
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