André F. Cournand shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with German surgeon Werner Forssmann and American physiologist Dickinson Woodruff Richards, Jr. for pioneering work in the field of cardiac and pulmonary physiology. Cournand helped develop the technique of cardiac catheterization, which was used at the time to obtain blood samples from the heart for determining cardiac abnormalities.

André Frédéric Cournand was born in Paris in 1895. His father, Jules Cournand, and his grandfather were both dentists. Cournand writes in his autobiography, From Roots to Late Budding: The Intellectual Adventures of a Medical Scientist, that his decision to study the sciences and medicine stemmed from his father's regrets of his own choice of dentistry over medicine. At age 15, young André began to accompany his parents to the salon of a physician friend where many internationally known scientists met and discussed issues...