William Kouwenhoven

William Bennet Kouwenhoven (1886 to 1975) was an American electrical engineer known as the father of cardiopulmonary resuscitation for his work on closed chest cardiac massage and the cardiac defibrillator. Educated at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and, for his doctorate, at the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule in Germany, he joined the engineering school of Johns Hopkins University in 1914 and served as its dean from 1938 to 1954. From early in his career he studied how electricity affects the human body. Working with the Johns Hopkins department of surgery and with support from the Edison Electric Institute, he developed a closed chest defibrillator. He received the Edison Medal in 1961 and the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award in 1973.