Biomedical Engineering - Founding Figures

Founding Figures

• Leslie Geddes (deceased)- Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, electrical engineer, inventor, and educator of over 2000 biomedical engineers, received a National Medal of Technology in 2006 from President George Bush for his more than 50 years of contributions that have spawned innovations ranging from burn treatments to miniature defibrillators, ligament repair to tiny blood pressure monitors for premature infants, as well as a new method for performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
• Y. C. Fung - professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, considered by many to be the founder of modern Biomechanics
• Robert Langer - Institute Professor at MIT, runs the largest BME laboratory in the world, pioneer in drug delivery and tissue engineering
• Herbert Lissner (deceased) - Professor of Engineering Mechanics at Wayne State University. Initiated studies on blunt head trauma and injury thresholds beginning in 1939 in collaboration with Dr. E.S. Gurdjian, a neurosurgeon at Wayne State's School of Medicine. Individual for whom the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' top award in Biomedical Engineering, the Herbert R. Lissner Medal, is named.
• Nicholas A. Peppas - Chaired Professor in Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, pioneer in drug delivery, biomaterials, hydrogels and nanobiotechnology.
• Otto Schmitt (deceased) - biophysicist with significant contributions to BME, working with biomimetics
• Ascher Shapiro (deceased) - Institute Professor at MIT, contributed to the development of the BME field, medical devices (e.g. intra-aortic balloons)
• John G. Webster - Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a pioneer in the field of instrumentation amplifiers for the recording of electrophysiological signals
• Robert Plonsey - Professor Emeritus at Duke University, pioneer of electrophysiology
• U. A. Whitaker (deceased) - provider of The Whitaker Foundation, which supported research and education in BME by providing over $700 million to various universities, helping to create 30 BME programs and helping finance the construction of 13 buildings
• Frederick Thurstone (deceased) - Professor Emeritus at Duke University, pioneer of diagnostic ultrasound
• Kenneth R. Diller - Chaired and Endowed Professor in Engineering, University of Texas at Austin. Founded the BME department at UT Austin. Pioneer in bioheat transfer, mass transfer, and biotransport
• Alfred E. Mann - Physicist, entrepreneur and philanthropist. A pioneer in the field of Biomedical Engineering.
• Forrest Bird - aviator and pioneer in the invention of mechanical ventilators
• Willem Johan Kolff (deceased) - pioneer of hemodialysis as well as in the field of artificial organs
• John James Rickard Macleod(deceased) - one of the co-discoverers of insulin at Case Western Reserve University.