Kolff, Willem Johan

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. 14 February 1914 Leiden, the Netherlands

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Dutch physician and inventor of the first effective artificial kidney.

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Kolff studied at Leiden Medical School and qualified in 1938. While studying at Gröningen in 1938, in the utilization of cellulose sausage skin which had become available he designed an artificial kidney, developing the work of Abel in animal experiments.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was banished to a provincial town. Even so, he succeeded in making some clandestine machines, one of which was effective in saving the life of a patient with acute renal failure. During 1950–67 he continued in general practice and at the University of Leiden, and in 1958–67 he was head of department and Professor of the Division of Artificial Organs at the University of Utah College of Medicine, Salt Lake City, USA. He was decorated for his services in the establishment of blood banks in Holland during the war.

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Bibliography

1944, "The artificial kidney: dialyser with great area", Acta. Med. Scand.

1962, "First clinical experience with the artificial kidney", Annals of Internal Medicine 62.

1990, "The invention of the artificial heart", International Journal of Artificial Organs.

Further Reading

Abel et al., 1913, "On the removal of diffusible substances form the circulating blood by means of dialysis", Transactions of the Association of American Physicians 28.

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