Alexis Carrel

Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) was a Nobel Prize winning French surgeon and biologist. Born on June 28, 1873 in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, Rhône, Carrel was raised in a devout Catholic family. He graduated from the University of Lyon, and later also received honorary doctorates from Queen’s University of Belfast, Princeton University, California, New York, Brown University and Columbia University. In 1903 he emigrated to Montreal, Canada, but soon relocated to Chicago, Illinois to work for Hull Laboratory. While there he collaborated with American physician Charles Claude Guthrie in work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs as well as the head, and Carrel was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for these efforts. In 1906 he joined the newly formed Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York where he spent the rest of his career. In the 1930s, Carrel became close friends with Charles A. Lindbergh, and together they built the first perfusion pump, an invention instrumental to the development of organ transplantation and open heart surgery. His 1935 book, L’Homme, cet inconnu (Man, The Unknown), in which he attempted to outline a comprehensive account of what is known—and, more importantly, unknown—of the human body and human life in terms of biology, physics, and medicine, became a bestseller. In 1937, Carrel joined Jean Coutrot’s Centre d’Etudes des Problèmes Humains with the aim to develop what he called an “economic humanism” through “collective thinking.” In 1941, via connections to the cabinet of Vichy France president Philippe Pétain, he advocated for and served at the Fondation Française pour l’Etude des Problèmes Humains (French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems), which was created by decree of the Vichy regime in 1941. Carrel died in Paris on November 5, 1944, aged 71.