William Bennet Kouwenhoven (13 January 1886 – 10 November 1975), also known as the "father of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR),” is famous for his development of the closed-chest cardiac massage and his invention of the cardiac defibrillator. After obtaining his doctorate degree in engineering from the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in Germany, Kouwenhoven began his career as the dean of at the Johns Hopkins University. Kouwenhoven focused his research mainly on improving and saving lives of patients through the application of electricity. With the help and cooperation of the Johns Hopkins Medical School's Department of Surgery and an Edison Electric Institution grant, Kouwenhoven developed a closed-chest defibrillator. For his contributions to the field of medical science, he became the first ever recipient of the honorary degree conferred by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Two years before his death, Kouwenhoven was also awarded the most prestigious biomedical prize: the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research. Kpatel1214 (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
William Bennet Kouwenhoven was born in Brooklyn, NY, on January 13, 1886. Kouwenhoven joined the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1903. As a college freshman, Kouwenhoven was intrigued by the relationship between electricity and medicine, which later became the topics for his English themes. Three years later, he graduated with a BA in electrical engineering. Then in 1907, he earned his MS in mechanical engineering and began teaching physics and electrical engineering at the institute. In 1910, Kouwenhoven married Abigail Baxter Remsen and traveled to Germany to study at the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule. After obtaining his doctorate in engineering in 1913, Kouwenhoven moved back to the United States. He then went on to teach engineering at Washington University in St. Louis for a year. In 1914, Kouwenhoven accepted a job as an instructor in the Electrical Engineering department at the Johns Hopkins University. In 1919, he was offered the position of an associate professor, and by 1930 he had been promoted to a full professor. [1]Kpatel1214 (talk) 16:52, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
In the year 1914, William Kouwenhoven was hired as a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Engineering. His research interests consisted of the effects of electricity on the human body as well as cardiac arrest. By 1919, he worked as an associate professor at Johns Hopkins and was later promoted to full professor in 1930. Kouwenhoven was able to hold that position for 24 years during his tenure at Johns Hopkins.Due to the success of his research, Kouwenhoven was promoted to an administrative position as the Dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Engineering from 1938 to 1954.[2] During this tenure as dean, Kouwenhoven was able to develop and perfect his most famous project on the electric cardiac defibrillator. At the age of 68, William Kouwenhoven retired as dean but continued to focus on his medical research at Hopkins past his retirement. By the end of his career at Hopkins, Kouwenhoven was awarded with two awards for his work at the institution: the Edison Medal (1961) and the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award.
By the 20th century, electricity was gradually integrated into society. Due to his interest in the field, William Kouwenhoven began to require old houses with electricity when he was college graduate. However, a problem arose when utility linemen, who were setting up electricity lines, started to die from ventricular fibrillation (VF). Electrical companies, such as Consolidated Edison of New York (ConED, funded research to study the effects of electricity on the human body. The Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health was selected to continue this research, and that's when William Kouwenhoven's work began.https://engineering.jhu.edu/include/content/pdf/engmag02/27_32.pdf
William Kouwenhoven’s research focused on the effects of electricity on the heart, and he wanted to develop an instrument that would revive or shock the heart without invasive surgery. The first procedures were done on rats and dogs, but both investigations failed to produce groundbreaking. In 1928, Kouwenhoven discovered that the high voltage shocks from the electrodes placed on the rats’ heads resulted in the heart to stop pumping blood. Another method included giving the rats CPR by massaging their chests. However, this failed because it resulted in the paralysis of the rats due to their crushed cervical spines. By the year 1933, Kouwenhoven switched his research focus onto dogs. William Kouwenhoven applied an outside electrical current to the chest in order to restore the heartbeat, but this procedure involved opening up the dog’s chest.[3] Despite the high risks of this procedure, in the 1940s, this procedure was performed on human patients. By 1957, Kouwenhoven’s laboratory team invented a defibrillator device that consisted of a small box with two insulated cables with copper electrodes. Guy Knickerbocker, an electrical engineer working at Kouwenhoven’s laboratory, discovered that the copper electrodes caused a rise in blood pressure in the rest of the body when they were pressed down onto the animal’s chest. James Jude, a cardiac surgeon who partnered with Kouwenhoven, also worked together in the lab in order to test out the defibrillator on patients.
After being appointed as the Associate Dean of the School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Kouwenhoven was also offered the position of vice-president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). He served as the vice-president from 1931 to 1933 and two years later became a member of the AIEE Board of Directors. In 1961, Kouwenhoven received the Edison Medal presented by the AIEE “for his inspiring leadership in education, for his contributions in the fields of electrical insulation, electrical measurements, and electrical science applied to medicine.” In 1969, Kouwenhoven became the first ever recipient of an honorary degree presented by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for his contributions to the medical science. Two years before his death, in 1973, Kouwenhoven was presented with the most prestigious biomedical prize in America: the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research. When he passed away in 1975, the New York Time obituary recognized Kouwenhoven’s accomplishments and contributions by stating that he had “developed the basic cardiac treatment devices and procedures used worldwide.” In Kouwenhoven’s honor and memory, the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University established the William B. Kouwenhoven Professorship in Electrical Engineering in 1981. The current holder of this Kouwenhoven Professorship is Jerry L. Prince, the associate director for research at the Center of Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology. Prince has worked on co-developing HARP MRI, which provides doctors with the ability to assess the condition of heart muscles within seconds. He is also currently researching image processing and computer vision with primary application to medical imaging. [4]Kpatel1214 (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
