William B. Kouwenhoven

William B. Kouwenhoven
Notable awards	IEEE Edison Medal

William Bennett Kouwenhoven (13 January 1886 – 10 November 1975), was an electrical engineer who developed closed-chest cardiac massage, part of CPR and also invented the first cardiac defibrillator.

Biography

He was born in Brooklyn, and received his B.E. from Brooklyn Polytechnic in New York, and his Ph.D. from the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in Germany in 1913. Kouwenhoven was an IEEE Fellow, recipient of the IEEE Edison Medal in 1961. He also received the Power Life Award and the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award.

He researched the electrophysiology of the heart and discovered the effects of electricity on the heart including defibrillation.

While a student at Brooklyn Polytech, Dr. Kouwenhoven joined Pi Kappa Phi fraternity on February 25, 1929.

External links

IEEE Edison Medal

1951–1975	Charles F. Wagner (1951) Vladimir K. Zworykin (1952) John F. Peters (1953) Oliver E. Buckley (1954) Leonid A. Umansky (1955) Comfort A. Adams (1956) John K. Hodnette (1957) Charles F. Kettering (1958) James F. Fairman (1959) Harold S. Osborne (1960) William B. Kouwenhoven (1961) Alexander C. Monteith (1962) John R. Pierce (1963) Walker Lee Cisler (1965) Wilmer L. Barrow (1966) George Harold Brown (1967) Charles F. Avila (1968) Hendrik Wade Bode (1969) Howard H. Aiken (1970) John Wistar Simpson (1971) William Hayward Pickering (1972) Bernard D. H. Tellegen (1973) Jan A. Rajchman (1974) Sidney Darlington (1975)

Complete roster 1909–1925 1926–1950 1951–1975 1976–2000 2001–present

Persondata
Name	Kouwenhoven, William B
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	13 January 1886
Place of birth
Date of death	10 November 1975
Place of death