Werner Forssmann thumb picture

Werner Forssmann

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1956

Biography

Werner Forssmann Werner Theodor Otto Forssmann was born in Berlin on August 29, 1904, the son of Julius Forssmann and Emmy Hindenberg. He was educated at the Askanische Gymnasium (secondary grammar school) in Berlin. Leaving school in 1922, he went to the University of Berlin to study medicine, passing his State Examination in 1929. For his clinical training he went to the University Medical Clinic, working under Professor Georg Klemperer, and he studied anatomy under Professor Rudolph Fick. For clinical instruction in surgery he went, in 1929, to the August Victoria Home at Eberswalde near Berlin.

It was here that he was the first to develop a technique for the catheterization of the heart. This he did by inserting a cannula into his own antecubital vein, through which he passed a catheter for 65 cm and then walked to the X-ray department, where a photograph was taken of the catheter lying in his right auricle.<