Doctor Hall of Fame

In 1954, Dr. Karmen developed the definitive enzymatic method for detecting transaminase activity in blood serum. This discovery allowed physicians to definitively confirm tissue damage following a heart attack or during active liver disease.

Technicon expanded Skeggs’ continuous-flow technology into sequential multiple analyzers (SMA and SMAC systems) in the late 1960s and 1970s, which allowed laboratories to perform panels of multiple biochemical tests simultaneously from a single blood sample. Grouping these specific seven tests together became routine clinical practice as automated multichannel machines became widespread.

Beyond engineering instruments, he conducted vital medical research at the VA Hospital in Cleveland. Alongside Joe Kahn, he successfully isolated and discovered Angiotensin I and II, and discovered the Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme (ACE). This breakthrough laid the groundwork for ACE inhibitors, which are now taken by millions globally to treat high blood pressure.

https://obits.cleveland.com/us/obituaries/cleveland/name/leonard-skeggs-obituary?id=17844025

Wallace H. Coulter was an American electrical engineer, inventor, and businessman. The best known of his 85 patents is the Coulter principle, which provides a method for counting and sizing microscopic particles suspended in fluid.

Scipione Riva Rocci was an Italian internist, pathologist and pediatrician. He is best known for the invention of an easy-to-use cuff-based version of the mercury sphygmomanometer for the measurement of blood pressure.

First Successful Treatment (1945): Kolff achieved the first successful recovery of a patient with acute kidney failure using his machine.

What is the Doctor Hall of Fame? In medical school, I made up an award called the Student’s Choice Award and gave it to the professor in the lecture-based learning program who actually taught us the material. Everyone else would just go through PowerPoint slides that somehow referenced the textbooks we were supposed to be reading. None of us read the textbooks, though, because the tests were based on stuff in the PowerPoints. So we just memorized a bunch of PowerPoints for each topic. I only did the lecture-based method of learning because all the girls in the class were in that program and not the independent study program. The independent study program was where you read the textbooks. Sometimes I wish I really had done the independent study program and read all those books. But I’ll never forget all the fun times we had in class. My best moment, I think, was when I gave this award called the Student’s Choice Award to the pharmacology professor, and he was so happy that he got an award. That’s what the Doctor Hall of Fame is about: actually giving an award to people who made a difference in medicine.

• About
• Dr. Helen Taussig was a pioneering American physician widely recognized as the founder of pediatric cardiology.
• Dr. Sivaramakrishna Iyer Padmavati, often called the “Godmother of Cardiology,” is widely recognized as one of the world’s earliest and most prominent female cardiologists, serving as the first female cardiologist in India.
• Dr. Rosalind Franklin was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who uncovered the helical nature of DNA.
• Dr. Girolamo Fracastoro (1546): Proposed three ways infections spread: direct contact, carriers/objects (fomites), and through the air.
• Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician and scientist who is universally recognized as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures.
• Coumadin (warfarin) was discovered by American biochemist Dr. Karl Paul Link and his research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1939.
• Albuterol (known internationally as salbutamol) was discovered in 1966 by a research team led by pharmacologist Sir David Jack.
• The first effective antibiotic cure for tuberculosis was discovered in 1943 by Dr. Selman Waksman.
• Dr. Robert Koch discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) in 1882.
• Dr. Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation and showed that microbes cause decay and fermentation.
• Dr. Peter Safar was a groundbreaking Austrian-born physician and anesthesiologist widely recognized as the “Father of CPR”.
• Dr. Alexis Frank Hartmann Sr. was an American pediatrician and clinical biochemist. He added sodium lactate to Ringer’s solution, creating what is now known as Ringer’s lactate solution or Hartmann’s solution for intravenous infusions.
• Dr. Sidney Ringer was a British physician and physiologist who created the original “Ringer’s solution” containing inorganic salts (sodium, potassium, and chloride) to study isolated frog hearts.
• Dr. Hartog Jacob Hamburger invented normal saline in 1896.
• Vancomycin was discovered by organic chemist Dr. Edmund C. Kornfeld working for Eli Lilly and Company in 1952.
• Dr. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.
• German physician Dr. Werner Forssmann invented the first human central venous catheter in 1929 by performing a famous self-experiment.
• 1920s: Arthur Guedel and Ralph Waters developed the cuffed endotracheal tube to create a secure, closed anesthetic airway.
• Dr. William Macewen (1878): Performed the first planned (elective) human oral endotracheal intubation for general anesthesia.
• French cardiologist Alain Cribier invented and performed the first human transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure on April 16, 2002.
• Arthur Karmen, M.D. established the first global standard for measuring blood transaminases (AST/ALT) to diagnose myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) and liver disease.
• In the 1950s, Dr. Leonard T. Skeggs Jr. invented the AutoAnalyzer in his basement, which was commercialized by the Technicon Corporation in 1957 and evolved into the modern Chem 7.
• Wallace H. Coulter patented the Coulter Principle—using electrical impedance to rapidly count and size microscopic cells—and introduced the Model A electronic counter, making the modern automated CBC possible.
• Sir John Floyer published the first scientific report on timing a pulse with a pendulum in 1707.
• Dr. Scipione Riva-Rocci introduced the modern inflatable blood-pressure cuff (sphygmomanometer) in 1896.
• Dr. Willem Kolff invented the first working hemodialysis machine (the artificial kidney) in 1943.
• Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was the first female surgeon in the United States, serving as a Union Army surgeon during the American Civil War.
• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.
• Dr. Marie Curie pioneered the therapeutic use of radiation to destroy diseased cells and treat tumors, forming the basis of modern radiation oncology.
• The founder of Lume Whole Body Deodorant is Dr. Shannon Klingman, a board-certified OB-GYN who created the brand in 2017.
• Portuguese physician Dr. Egas Moniz invented angiography in 1927 when he developed cerebral angiography to visualize brain blood vessels.
• Judy Faulkner, the founder and CEO of Epic Systems, is married to Dr. Gordon Faulkner, a retired pediatrician.
• Dr. Michael Crichton
• Dr. Ken Jeong
• Dr. Azad Kabir patented the methodology used in artificial intelligence (AI) medical decision making in 2011.
• In 1851, Irish physician Dr. Arthur Leared invented the binaural stethoscope, a stethoscope that fits into both ears.
• The stethoscope was invented by French physician René Laennec in 1816.
• The MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine was invented by Dr. Raymond Vahan Damadian, an American physician and scientist who built the first full-body MR scanner and filed the first MRI patent.
• Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield was an English electrical engineer who built the first commercially viable CT scanner at EMI Laboratories in England between 1967 and 1972.
• Dr. Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays on November 8, 1895, creating the foundation for the field of radiology.
• Dutch physician and physiologist Dr. Willem Einthoven invented the first practical electrocardiograph (ECG or EKG) in 1901–1903.
• Dr. Frederick Banting: A Canadian pharmacologist, orthopedist, and field surgeon conceived the initial idea to extract insulin from the pancreas.  
• Sir James Black, a Scottish physician and pharmacologist, discovered the first beta-blocker drug (propranolol) in 1964, which laid the groundwork for preventing heart attacks and treating heart disease.
• Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant on December 3, 1967.
• Dr. Vasilii I. Kolesov performed the first clinical coronary artery bypass using manual suture techniques in 1964.
• Dr. Robert H. Goetz performed the first successful clinical coronary artery bypass operation on May 2, 1960, using a special tantalum ring to connect the right internal thoracic artery to the coronary artery.
• American general practitioner Dr. Lawrence Craven first observed and reported in the late 1940s and 1950s that daily low-dose aspirin could prevent heart attacks and strokes.
• Metformin’s glucose-lowering properties in humans for treating diabetes were discovered by French physician Jean Sterne in 1957.
• Dr. Edward Jenner invented the first successful vaccine in 1796.

Career and Civil War Service

Education: Graduated with an M.D. from Syracuse Medical College in 1855.

Military Appointment: Initially rejected due to her gender, she volunteered as a nurse and surgeon before becoming the Army’s first official female surgeon as a civilian contract surgeon in 1863.

Medal of Honor: Awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1865 by President Andrew Johnson; she remains the only woman to receive the award.

• Name: Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
• Degree Year: 1849
• School: Geneva Medical College in New York
• Birth & Death: Born in Bristol, England in 1821; died in 1910

Coined “Radioactivity”: She established that radiation was an atomic property of an element rather than an interaction between molecules. She also utilized the Curie electrometer (invented by Pierre and Jacques Curie) to measure faint electrical currents caused by radiation.