INVENTIONS AND INNOVATIONS IN THE FIELD OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

Antoine van Leeunwenhoek (1660)

• Father of Microbiology

• Known for his work on the improvement of the microscope

Edward Jenner (1796)

• Discovered vaccination to establish immunity to smallpox.

• Impact of Contribution: Immunology

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1880)

• Identified organs by their types of tissues.

• Impact of Contribution: Histology

Agostino Bassi (1835)

• Produced disease in worms by injection of organic material which marks the beginning of bacteriology.

Louis Pasteur (1857)

• Successfully produced immunity to rabies.

Gregor Mendel (1866)

• Enunciated his law of inherited characteristics from studies on plants.

Joseph Lister (1870)

• Demonstrated the surgical infections are caused by airborne organisms.

Robert Koch (1877)

• Presented the first pictures of bacilli (anthrax), and later tubercle bacilli.

Elie Metchnikoff (1886)

• Described phagocytes in blood and their role in fighting infections.

Ernst von Bergmann (1886)

• Introduced steam sterilization in surgery.

Karl Landsteiner (1902)

• Distinguished blood groups through the development of the ABO blood group system.

August von Wassermann (1906)

• Developed immunologic tests for syphilis.

Howard Ricketts (1906)

• Discovered microorganism whose range lies between bacteria and viruses called “rickettsia”.

Hans Fitcher (1929)

• Worked out the structure of hemoglobin.

Jonas Salk (1954)

• Developed poliomyelitis vaccine.

James Westgard (1973)

• Introduced the Westgard Rules for quality control in the clinical laboratory.

Baruch Samuel Blumberg (1980)

• Introduced the Hepatitis B vaccine.

Kary Mullis (1985)

• Developed the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).

Andre van Steirteghem (1992)

• Introduced intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

James Thomson (1998)

• Derived the first human stem cell line.