Domplein 29, 3512 JE Utrecht, Netherlands
In Utrecht Einthoven graduated from high school and registered as a medical student in 1879. While a student, Einthoven was active in sports; when he broke his wrist in a fall, he made it the occasion to publish a study on the pronation and supination of the forearm (1882). On July 4, 1885 he received the Ph.D in medicine cum laude with a thesis on stereoscopy through color differentiation.
Willem Einthoven when he was Rector of the Senate of the University of Leiden.
Willem Einthoven in 1903, at the top right.
A photo of Willem Einthoven in his laboratory.
Willem Einthoven and the Electrocardiogram.
Willem Einthoven in his laboratory at Leiden University.
A portrait of Willem Einthoven.
A portrait of young Willem Einthoven.
In 1995 a stamp was issued in the Netherlands to commemorate Einthoven's contributions to science.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Society.
Einthoven was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1924 Einthoven was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing the first practical system of electrocardiography used in medical diagnosis.
Willem Einthoven when he was Rector of the Senate of the University of Leiden.
Domplein 29, 3512 JE Utrecht, Netherlands
In Utrecht Einthoven graduated from high school and registered as a medical student in 1879. While a student, Einthoven was active in sports; when he broke his wrist in a fall, he made it the occasion to publish a study on the pronation and supination of the forearm (1882). On July 4, 1885 he received the Ph.D in medicine cum laude with a thesis on stereoscopy through color differentiation.
Willem Einthoven in 1903, at the top right.
A photo of Willem Einthoven in his laboratory.
Willem Einthoven and the Electrocardiogram.
Willem Einthoven in his laboratory at Leiden University.
In 1995 a stamp was issued in the Netherlands to commemorate Einthoven's contributions to science.
In 1924 Einthoven was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing the first practical system of electrocardiography used in medical diagnosis.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Society.
Einthoven was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A portrait of Willem Einthoven.
A portrait of young Willem Einthoven.
https://www.amazon.com/Eine-Isolationsvorrichtung-gegen-Erschutterungen-Umgebung/dp/B002OWXIJC/?tag=2022091-20
1895
https://www.amazon.com/Neuere-Ergebnisse-Gebiete-tierischen-Elektrizit%C3%A4t/dp/B008WDKFXE/?tag=2022091-20
1911
educator inventor physician physiologist scientist
Ethnicity:
Einthoven's father was of Jewish and Dutch descent, and his mother's ancestry was Dutch and Swiss.
Willem Einthoven was born on March 21, 1860, in Semarang, Dutch East Indies. Einthoven’s father was municipal physician of Semarang; he married Louise M. M. C. de Vogel. He died in 1866, and four years later his widow settled in Utrecht with their six children.
In Utrecht Einthoven graduated from high school and registered as a medical student in 1879. While a student, Einthoven was active in sports; when he broke his wrist in a fall, he made it the occasion to publish a study on the pronation and supination of the forearm (1882). On July 4, 1885 he received the Ph.D in medicine cum laude with a thesis on stereoscopy through color differentiation.
In December 1885 Einthoven was appointed professor of physiology at Leiden. In the same year, after the London physiologist A. D. Waller had published the curve for the action current of the heart as deduced from the body surface and had announced that he was unable to calculate its true shape (as recorded with Lippmann’s capillary electrometer), Einthoven repeated this experiment. He defined the physical constants of the capillary electrometer and calculated the true curve, which he called the electrocardiogram. Einthoven considered direct registration of the curve’s true shape a necessity. Starting from the mirror galvanometer of Deprez-d’Arsonval, he arrived at his brilliant conception of the string galvanometer. In 1896, while working on the construction of this instrument and developing the necessary photographic equipment, he registered electrocardiograms with the capillary electrometer as well as heart sounds of humans and animals.
For making electrocardiograms Einthoven chose the ordinate and abscissa in such a way that all details of the electrocardiogram would appear as clearly as possible. In 1903 he defined the standard measures for general use - one centimeter movement of the ordinate for one millivolt tension difference and a shutter speed of twenty-five millimeters per second, so that one centimeter of the abscissa represented 0.4 second. He indicated the various extremes by the random letters P, Q, R, S, and T and chose both hands and the left foot as contact points. This gave three possible combinations for contact which he labeled I (both hands); II (right hand-left foot); and III (left hand-left foot).
In 1912 Einthoven’s research on the explanation of the respiratory changes in the electrocardiogram led him to the scheme of the equilateral triangle, considering the extremities as elongations of the electrodes. The information received from the am tacts thus represents the projection of what takes place in the heart. With simultaneous registration of the three contacts, the size and direction of the resultant of all potential differences in the heart could be calculated minute by minute. Einthoven referred to this as the manifest size and direction of the electrical axis. He indicated the direction by the angle a of this axis with the horizontal and called it positive when it turned clockwise, negative when counterclockwise. Clinical electrocardiograms were studied by connecting patients with heart disease in the academic hospital to the instrument in Einthoven’s laboratory by means of a cable 1.5 kilometers long (1906).
These “telecardiograms” acquainted Einthoven with many forms of heart disease. In addition he deepened his insight by registering heart sounds and murmurs simultaneous to the electrocardiogram by means of a second string galvanometer. The construction of a string recorder and a string myograph, both based on the torsion principle, enabled him to prove that the electrocardiogram and muscle contraction are inseparably connected.
In 1924 he visited America to give the Dungham lectures. Upon his return to Leiden he found two foreign requests to register the action currents of the cervical sympathetic nerve. With the newly constructed vacuum string galvanometer he succeeded, on April 28, 1926, in registering the tonus action current and, after irritation of the organ, the thereupon induced action current of the cervical sympathetic nerve. His last major physical experiment, which he carried out in company with his son, was concerned with the reception of radiotelegrams broadcast by the machine transmitter “Malabar” in Java. In this case the string of 0.1 micron diameter and six millimeters length had to be synchronized with the 40,000 vibrations of the transmitting wave. Einthoven and his son found the resonance point after they achieved a variation in tension of one micromicron, after which telegrams from the machine transmitter, working at top speed, were perfectly photographed on paper one centimeter wide.
Einthoven’s last work was his treatise on the action current of the heart, which appeared posthumously in Bethe’s Handbuch der normalen und pathologischen Physiologie.
Willem Einthoven is remembered for his invention of the first practical electrocardiogram. Although later technological advances brought about better and more portable EKG devices, much of the terminology used in describing an EKG originated with Einthoven. His assignment of the letters P, Q, R, S and T to the various deflections is still used.
The term Einthoven's triangle is named for him. It refers to the imaginary inverted equilateral triangle centered on the chest and the points being the standard leads on the arms and leg.
In 1924 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing the first practical system of electrocardiography used in medical diagnosis.
Einthoven was a member of the Royal Society, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 1886 Einthoven married his cousin Frédérique Jeanne Louise de Vogel; they had three daughters and a son.
