Background
Richards was born on October 30, 1895 in Orange, New Jersey.
Richards was born on October 30, 1895 in Orange, New Jersey.
He received an A. B. degree from Yale University in 1917 and an M. D. degree from Columbia University in 1923.
From 1945 to 1961 he was Director of the First Medical (Columbia) Division at Bellevue Hospital, and from 1947 to 1961 Lambert Professor of Medicine at Columbia University.
In 1931, Richards became associated with Cournand in research on pulmonary and heart diseases. Beginning in 1940, they developed Forssmann's technique of cardiac catheterization, or passing a catheter (small tube) along a vein in the arm and into the heart. By this technique, they were able to determine conditions of pressure and blood flow produced by the heart's contraction in normal and diseased states and, thus, add considerably to knowledge of diseases of the heart. Cardiac catheterization became an important diagnostic procedure, and has been of great value in the development of heart surgery. Dr. Richards was co-author, with Alfred P. Fishman, of Circulation of the Blood: Men and Ideas (1964).
Richards died on February 23, 1973, in Lakeville, Connecticut.