Richards, Dickinson Woodruff (1895-1973)

US physician who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1956 with Werner Forssmann and André Cournand for work on the technique for passing a catheter into the heart for diagnostic purposes.

In 1929, the German surgeon Forssmann placed a hollow tube into a vein in his arm and advanced it until its tip entered the right atrium of his heart. This procedure, called cardiac catheterization, was developed further by Richards and Cournand so that the tube could be inserted into the right side of the heart and the pulmonary artery in order to study congenital heart disease. They also succeeded in the catheterization of the left side of the heart by passing the tube through the septum which separates the two sides of the heart.

This technique made it possible to measure blood pressure in the various chambers of the heart and proved enormously valuable for the development of noninvasive surgery for some forms of congenital heart disease and narrowed arteries.

Richards was born in New Jersey and studied medicine at Yale University before joining the teaching staff of Columbia University, where he specialized in cardiology.