Dr. Willem J. Kolff, the man behind the first artificial kidney and several other devices that have improved and saved the lives of so many people, died of natural causes Wednesday at his home in Newtown Square, Pa., at the age of 97.
His death was announced by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where Dr. Kolff was a distinguished professor emeritus of bioengineering, surgery and internal medicine.
Dr. Kolff, also known as “the father of the artificial organ,” was the inventor of the dialysis machine during the World War II in Holland using an enable tub, a wooden drum, metal, cellophane sausage casings and an electric motor.
He believed that if waste products and acid could be filtered out of someone’s blood for a few days, that person might survive until the kidney started working again. Although his first 16 patients died, he never gave up improving the machine. In August1945, a month after the war ended, a 67-year-old woman became the first patient on whom his machine worked. She survived for seven more years and died of causes non-related to her renal failure. In the years after war, Dr. Kolff refined his dialysis machine sending versions of it to medical scientists in the US, England and Canada.
In 1950, Dr. Kolff immigrated to the US and worked for the Cleveland Clinic. 1967, he moved to the University of Utah where he remained for the rest of his life.
Dr. Jolff also got involved in the development of heart-lung machines, which could oxygenate blood and maintain heart and pulmonary function during cardiac surgery. As a head of the University of Utah’s Division of Artificial Organs and Institute for Biomedical Engineering, he was the master behind the artificial heart. The first such heart was implanted in 1982 in a retired dentist named Barney Clark. Unfortunately, he died 112 later after suffering many complications.
Dr. Kolff was “emblematic figure in 20th century medicine. His way of moving medicine forward was through technology. The first device that took over the function of a major organ is a reliable way was his ‘artificial kidney,’” medical historian Steven J. Peitzman of Drexel University said. He is the author of the 2007 book “Dropsy, Dialysis, Transplant: A Shirt History of Failing Kidneys.”
The device got him the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2002. This is just one of the approximately 120 international awards he obtained for his contribution to the medical field.
Dr. Kolff is survived by five children, Jacob, Albert Kolff of Fairfield, Conn., Cornelius Kolff of Port Townsend, Wash., Therus Kolff of Atlanta and Adrie Burnett of Falmouth, England. His , Janke Huidekoper, whom he married in 1937, died in 2005.
