Richards, Dickinson Woodruff, Jr.

Richards, Dickinson Woodruff, Jr., 1895–1973, American physician and physiologist, b. Orange, N.J., grad. Yale, 1917, M.D. Columbia, 1923. He joined the staff of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia in 1928 and became professor of medicine in 1945. He shared with André F. Cournand and Werner Forssmann the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work in developing a technique whereby a catheter can be inserted through a vein into the heart. This technique facilitates study of the condition of the heart in health and in disease.