1873-1944
America's First Nobel Prize in Medicine- Scientist and Eccentric Philosopher

The Threads of Life.

Alexis Carrel was born in Lyons, France, on 28 June 1873. He became a physician in Lyons, began his experimental work in surgery in 1902, and then immigrated to the United States in 1904. When the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research opened its doors in New York in 1906, it included Carrel among its outstanding investigators. In 1912 the Nobel Prize Committee awarded him the first Nobel Prize in medicine given to an American in recognition of his work on the suturing together of blood vessels and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs. The development of this technique laid the foundation for vascular surgery, heart surgery, and transplantation of organs.

Eccentric Philosopher.

In the 1930s Carrel became one of the first medical scientists in America to attract widespread public attention. In 1935, late in his career as...