Nils Hansson

No Silver Medal for Nobel Prize Contenders: Why Anesthesia Pioneers Were Nominated for but Denied the Award.

Taking the examples of the pioneers Carl Ludwig Schleich, Carl Koller, and Heinrich Braun, this article provides a first exploratory account of the history of anesthesiology and the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Besides the files collected at the Nobel Archive in Sweden, which are presented here for the first time, this article is based on medical literature of the early 20th century. Using Nobel Prize nominations and Nobel committee reports as points of departure, the authors discuss why no anesthesia pioneer has received this coveted trophy. These documents offer a new perspective to explore and to better understand aspects of the history of anesthesiology in the first half of the 20th century.

Nobel Prize for Physical Therapy? Rise, Fall, and Revival of Medico-Mechanical Institutes

This historical vignette explores the considerations of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine by vetting the Nobel Prize chances of Dr Gustaf Zander (1835–1920). His way to stardom started 150 years ago when he began mechanizing the passive and active movements that physical therapists manually used to treat diseases. A glance at his machines shows that they parallel surprisingly well what can be found in modern fitness studios. By combining files from the Nobel Prize Archive and sources from the first physical therapists, this vignette pieces together why Zander was considered one of the best candidates for the Nobel Prize in 1916. By providing this glimpse of history, questions about the origin of physical therapy concepts and the profession of the physical therapist are raised.

Why did Alfred Blalock and Helen Taussig not receive the nobel prize

From the 1940s to the 1960s, the number of cardiac surgeons nominated for the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine grew rapidly. These nominations pinpoint major developments ranging from the first closed extracardiac operations to the era of complete intracardiac repair and treatment of congenital heart diseases. The aim of this article is to present the motivations for the numerous Nobel Prize nominations for the cardiac surgeon Alfred Blalock and the pediatric cardiologist Helen B. Taussig, and to show why the Nobel committee finally chose not to award them for the development of the Blalock–Taussig shunt.

Nobel Prize nominees and the rise of urology in Europe around 1900.

PurposeRecent historical research has reconstructed the roads leading to the Nobel Prize for the trained urologists Werner Forssmann (1904–1979) in 1956 and Charles Huggins (1901–1997) in 1966. However, the story of urology and the Nobel Prize does not start and end with the laureates. Taking James Israel (1848–1926), Félix Guyon (1831–1920), and Peter J Freyer (1852–1921) as examples, this paper shows that pioneers in urology were in fact runners-up for the award much earlier.MethodsThe study is based on an analysis of original files in the Nobel Prize archive in Stockholm, scientific publications of the early twentieth century, and secondary literature.Result and conclusionWe argue that Israel’s, Guyon’s, and Freyer’s candidacies reflect not only scientific trends and controversies in urology at the turn of twentieth century, but that the development of the specialty itself was reflected in nominations of physicians working on problems of the genito-urinary system.

Nominee and nominator, but never Nobel Laureate: Vincenz Czerny and the Nobel Prize

PurposeThe Heidelberg surgeon Vincenz Czerny (1842–1916) is remembered as pioneer of innovative operations as well as entrepreneur of interdisciplinary cancer therapy. The purpose of this paper is to describe his role during the early history of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.MethodBased on documents from the Nobel Archive, this paper investigates how Czerny contributed, both as nominee and nominator, in shaping the early years of Nobel Prize history.ResultsVincenz Czerny was nominated at least three times for the Nobel Prize, but he was never selected. Czerny’s own nomination letters pinpoint important trends in medicine around the turn of the century. At least seven of the candidates he put forward, became Nobel Laureates.ConclusionCzerny—like many other internationally renowned surgeons during the first decades of the twentieth century—missed out on the Nobel Prize, partly because it is not a lifetime award and his work would have to have been more recent. However, with his nominations, Czerny helped to shape the Nobel Prize to become the most important scientific award worldwide.

Remembering Charles B. Huggins’ Nobel Prize for Hormonal Treatment of Prostatic Cancer at its 50th Anniversary

Charles B. Huggins received the Nobel Prize in 1966. Based on archival sources from the Nobel archive we have found that nominators emphasised the practical therapeutic applications of his discoveries that were showing 25 yr after his key publications.

A “Life Dedicated to True Science”: Eduard Pflüger and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

The Nobel Prize Archive for Physiology or Medicine in Stockholm has recently gained scholarly attention among historians [8, 12, 22], but it has not yet been sufficiently examined by historians of physiology [13]. Studies of Nobel Prize nominations of renowned physiologists and reports by the Nobel Committee can help reconstructing many of the important developments in the field of physiology over the last century. Drawing on documents from the Nobel Prize Archive, we examine why contemporary scientists argued that the German physiologist Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (1829–1910) was “the person who [had] made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine” (quote from Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895 [15]), look at his strongest Nobel Prize competitors, and discuss the reasons of the Nobel Committee for not awarding him. Eduard Pflüger founded the Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie des Menschen und der Thiere in 1868. The first issue included papers by senior and junior physiologists such as Franciscus Donders (1818–1889) [9], Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) [14], Julius Bernstein (1839–1917) [2], and Nathan Zuntz (1847–1920) [27]. The new periodical acquired an immediate strong reputation in Europe. At the turn of the century, the journal gained international fame after the publication of groundbreaking research in the field of electrophysiology, for example, Ernest Overton’s (1865–1933) major contributions on the structure and function of cell membranes [23] and Julius Bernstein’s physical explanation of the resting membrane potential [3]. Today, Pflüger is a household name among physiologists because of the journal, which even after name discussions [19, 20] still is abbreviated Pflugers Arch., but also for Pflüger’s Law of polar excitation (Pflüger’sche Zuckungsgesetze, in fact three laws), which refers to the correlation between electrical stimulation and muscular contraction. These laws were described by Pflüger in 1859 [25]. Prior to that publication, Pflüger discussed them in a correspondence with Helmholtz [24]. Pflüger’s biography is of particular interest to physiologists since it exemplifies the development from the time before physiology existed as an independent speciality until it had become a cornerstone of medical research and education—a function that Pflüger himself has encapsulated in his adage that a “... physician without physiological knowledge is like a watchmaker who is supposed to correct the abnormal action of a clockwork, but is ignorant of the normal operating conditions of the machine he is called to repair.” [29]. At the end of his life, Pflüger was able to look back on a long and dynamic career: starting with his first experiments as assistant to Johannes Müller (1801–1858) and student of Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) in the early 1850s, up to his controversial ideas on the origin of diabetes 50 years later [29]. Pflüger, born in the small town Hanau near Frankfurt am Main on 7 June 1829, earned his MD in 1855. In 1859, barely 30 years old, he became chair of physiology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Bonn. A few months later, Pflüger gained international recognition after his investigations on the effects of electricity on irritability and the frog nerves’ response to stimuli [26]. Over the years, Pflüger received many scientific prizes and he became member of several foreign scientific societies, but he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, even though he was one of the most nominated physiologists for the prize in the first decade of the twentieth century. From 1902 to 1910, Pflüger was proposed by at least 40 professors of medicine. N. Hansson (*) Department of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, University Medical Center, Humboldtallee 36, 37073 Göttingen, Germany e-mail: nhansso@gwdg.de

The Nobel Prize and otolaryngology: ‘Papa Gunnar’s’ promotion of his peers Gustav Killian and Themistocles Gluck

Abstract Objectives: This study is part of a larger project investigating the enactment of excellence in medicine, with a focus on the Nobel Prize. It takes a closer look at two promising candidates for the Prize in the 1920s and 1930s, Gustav Killian and Themistocles Gluck, and aims at reconstructing their Nobel careers as well as taking Gunnar Holmgren’s role as a nominator and evaluator behind the curtains into account. Method: Besides the files collected at the Nobel Archive, the paper is based on a review of scientific publications and ergo-biographical sketches. Results: An analysis of Nobel Prize nominations and evaluations offer a unique perspective to study aspects of the history of otolaryngology. Conclusion: Using original files in the archive of the Nobel committee for physiology or medicine in Sweden, this historical vignette explores judgments of scientific innovation and performance in the history of otolaryngology during the first half of the 20th century. This study shows that Gunnar Holmgren, the founder of Acta Oto-Laryngologica in 1918, repeatedly put forward scholars within the field as prime contenders for the award.

Politics and physiology: Hermann Rein and the Nobel Prize 1933–1953

Today, more than sixty years after he passed away, Hermann Rein (1898–1953) still is a familiar name in the history of physiology. Senior physiologists may remember his widespread textbook Einführung in die Physiologie des Menschen, (Rein, 1936) first published in 1936, which was followed up by many new editions (Bretschneider, 1997). Some have heard of the scientific Hermann Rein Prize, which was established to honour him, and if you visit the university town of Göttingen, where Rein worked from 1932 to 1952, you might cross the Hermann-Rein-Straße. Not much is known about the fact that Hermann Rein was one of few physiologists in Germany, who, before, during and after the Second World War, was portrayed as an international representative of good German science. Thus, he was one of the most nominated German physiologists for the Nobel Prize in the first half of the twentieth century. This essay aims at shedding some light on the interface between physiology and politics in Germany during 1933–1953. The example of a scholar from Göttingen is particularly suitable for such an overview. After Adolf Hitler’s Machtübernahme in 1933, the Georg-August-University of Göttingen was – compared to its reputation in the first third of the twentieth century – no longer a strong international academic centre. Jewish professors and lecturers at

The Limit of a strong Lobby: Why did August Bier and Ferdinand Sauerbruch never receive the Nobel Prize?

August Bier (1861-1949) and Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875-1951) have remained two of the most influential figures during the first half of the 20th century in German and even in international surgery. They were jointly awarded Adolf Hitlers German Science Prize in 1937, but never the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, although no other German surgeons were nominated as often as Bier and Sauerbruch for the prestigeful award from 1901 to 1950. This contribution gives an overview of the reasons why and by whom Bier and Sauerbruch were nominated, and discusses the reasons of the Nobel Prize Committee for not awarding them.