Werner Forssmann

Werner Forssmann

Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann (29 August 1904 – 1 June 1979) was a physician from Germany who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine (with Andre Cournand and Dickinson Richards) for developing a procedure that allowed for cardiac catheterization. In 1929, he put himself under local anesthetic and inserted a catheter into his own arm. Not knowing when the catheter might pierce a vein, he risked his own life and was able to pass the catheter into his own heart.