Alexis Carrel

French scientist, biologist and surgeon, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in blood vessel surgery and the transplanting of organs and tissues. He proved that tissues would survive apart from their organs if properly nourished. He wrote "Man, the Unknown," 1935 and "The Culture of Organs," 1938.

The son of a silk merchant, Carrel received his M.D. from the University of Lyon in 1900. He acquired dexterity in surgery by anatomical studies and dissection and also by sewing, training himself to take stitches with a very fine needle and thread in paper to reduce the visibility of the stitch.

Brilliant and innovative, Carrel gained enmity from some of his fellow scientists at the University of Lyon. He decided to give up the medical profession and become a cattle rancher in Canada in 1904. After a brief detour to the Canadian prairies, he got back on the science track at the Hull Physiological Laboratory in Chicago. He gained renown for discovering a new way of sewing together the ends of an artery and by removing a dog’s thyroid and replacing it upside down to demonstrate thyroid functioning. He was asked to join the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York in 1906, and became a member in 1912. He won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for success in suturing blood vessels and organ transplantation.

Carrel married Anne de la Motte, widow of the Marquis de la Mairie, in 1913. He joined the French Army at the outbreak of the war, won the Legion of Honor and soon became a major. His wife served as head nurse of the French Red Cross. As a result of his military experience, with a fellow chemist, Carrel perfected the famed Carrel-Dakin antiseptic solution for treatment of infected wounds. After being honorably discharged from the French Army Medical Corps in 1919, he returned to the Rockefeller Institute, where he developed new techniques for tissue cultivation, and organ cultivation outside of the animal body.