Alexis Carrel, the French surgeon and biologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques.
Carrel was born at Lyons, France, on 28th June, 1873. In 1900, he received his formal medical degree from the University of Lyons. He was elected twice, in 1924 and 1927, as an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
During the first decade of the 20th century, Alexis Carrell developed methods for sewing blood vessels together. These were much required, and a crucial part of surgery. It also laid the groundwork for transplant surgery.
He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation. During World War I, Carrel and the English chemist Henry Drysdale Dakin developed the Carrel—Dakin method of treating wounds based on chlorine which preceding the development of antibiotics was a major medical advance in the care of deep wounds.
He died in Paris on 5th November, 1944.
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