Willem Kolff

Dutch-American physician and inventor, a pioneer of hemodialysis and the development of artificial organs.

"Pim" Kolff was the eldest son in a family of five boys. His father Jacob Kolff (19 March 1883, Middelharnis, 4 Oct. 1948, Beekbergen) was a general practitioner in Leiden. Later he became director of the tuberculosis Sanatorium in Beekbergen. His mother was Adriana Pieternella de Jonge (12 Sept 1886. Muiderberg - 12 Feb. 1981, Apeldoorn).

Kolff studied medicine in Leiden (-1938). In May 1940 he established the first bloodbank on mainland Europe in five days time in the Zuidwal Hospital in The Hague, during the nazi-attack on Holland. In Groningen, when studying internal medicine under prof. Leo Polak Daniëls, he witnessed the painful death of a young man from acute kidney failure. This stimulated his interest in artificial-organ development.

In the night of 14/15 May 1940 his Jewish mentor prof. Leo Polak Daniëls (31 March 1872, Den Haag) and his spouse Catharina took their lives in Den Haag. That day Rotterdam was bombarded. Kolff was shocked. In 1941 Kolf decided to leave the University of Groningen, that became more and more under control of NSB and Nazi Party members. He went to the small city hospital in Kampen (1 July 1941), where he started his pioneering work to fabricate an artificial kidney under difficult (War Time) circumstances. The water pump needed to make the machine, was derived from a T-Ford, the bio-membranes came from a local butcher.

In 1942 he developed the first artificial kidney. The original device, became the prototype for the contemporary hemodialysis machine. It was first used on 17 March 1943, but without success. On 11 September 1945, after 16 failures, he first managed to save a patients life by hemodialysis in Kampen. Her name was Maria Sofia Schafstadt, a Nazi sympathizer, but Kolff was glad to save her life.