Over time, many individuals–including non-urologists–have made contributions to the specialty. These individuals and their work have changed how urologists and other medical professionals treat and view the human body, inside and out. Learn more about the doctors, inventors, educators and researchers who helped shaped urology. If you are looking for a specific person, click on the first letter of their last name in the list above.
Frère Jacques Beaulieu (1651 – 1719)
Frère Jacques Beaulieu was one of the most celebrated lithomists of the 17th century as he performed around 5,000 lithotomies in 30 years. more
Arnold Belker, MD (1934 – 2023)
Arnold Belker was born in Louisville. Kentucky. He attended Indiana University.and received his further undergraduate and medical education at the University of Louisville. more
Christian Albert Theodore Billroth (1829 – 1894)
Christian Albert Theodore Billroth was born on April 26, 1829 in Prussia. He introduced a pattern for surgical operations of the stomach, biliary tract and female genitalia and is now considered the founder of modern abdominal surgery. Many of his methods are still used today. more
Philipp Bozzini (1773 – 1809)
Philipp Bozzini, born in Frankfurt, Germany on May 25, 1773, went to school in Mainz where he began to study medicine. Bozzini was fascinated with creating an instrument that would allow a physician to look into the inner cavities of the human body. more
James Buchanan "Diamond Jim" Brady (1856 – 1917)
Born in New York City, James Buchanan Brady made his fortune by selling railroad equipment, though he started his career as a messenger boy in Grand Central Station. In addition to being obese, hypertensive and diabetic, Mr. Brady also had gallstones, an obstructing prostate and infected urine. The only physician willing to operate on him was Hugh Hampton Young, MD who used his prostate punch on Mr. Brady in 1912. more
Herbert Brendler, MD (1914 – 1986) (Curator 1985 – 1986)
Born January 20, 1914, Herbert Brendler, MD (1914-1986) of New York City, was the 79th AUA president after having served five years as AUA secretary. more
Max Brödel (1870 – 1941)
Born in Leipzig, Germany, Max Brödel attended Technical High School and then went on to the Leipzig Academy of Fine Arts from 1885-1990. After serving for one year in the service, he returned to his hometown in 1892 to begin freelance art and mastered anatomical illustrations when he began to work for Dr. Kelly in the Gynecological Department of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. more
Leo Buerger, MD (1879 – 1943)
Leo Buerger, MD was born in Vienna, Austria in 1879. In 1906, Buerger began to improve the cystoscope and presented his instrument in 1909. It remained the leading cystoscope instrument in the States until the fiberoptic illumination and modern lens systems replaced it in the 1970s. more
H. Ballentine Carter, MD (1953 – )
H. Ballentine Carter, MD attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, where he received bachelor's degrees in biology from the college and in pharmacy from the School of Pharmacy in 1975. He then attended the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston where he received his medical degree in 1981 with honors (Alpha Omega Alpha). more
William J. Catalona, MD (1942 – )
Born November 14, 1942 and a graduate of Yale Medical School, William Catalona, MD trained in surgery at the Yale New-Haven Hospital, the University of California, San Francisco, and the National Cancer Institute, and trained in urology at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Catalona is a researcher and prostate-cancer surgeon and is known for having been the first to show that a simple blood test that measures levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the most accurate method for detecting prostate cancer. more
Jean Civiale (1792 – 1867)
Jean Civiale, a surgeon in Paris, worked much of his life to treat bladder calculi. In 1818, he designed an instrument with a flexible sac attached that was designed to trap the stone that could be passed into the bladder. more
William H. Cooner, MD, FACS (1927 – 1994)
William H. Cooner, MD, FACS was born in the small town of Jasper, Alabama in 1927. He received undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Alabama, and studied at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medicine and its hospital. more
Wirt B. Dakin, MD (1883 – 1975) (Historian 1947 – 1965)
Wirt Dakin, MD completed his urology training with Louis Schmidt in Chicago in 1912. He began to practice in Los Angeles, and in 1916 filmed the first urologic movie, of an open prostatectomy. Due to poor lighting, it had to be shot on the roof of the old LA General County Hospital. more
Sakti Das, MD, FACS (1939 – ) (Historian 2006 – 2010)
Sakti Das, MD, FACS became the AUA historian in 2006. He was a staff urologist at Northern California Kaiser Permanente for 20 years and is a retired professor of urology from the University of California, Davis. As the historian for the Western Section, Dr. Das has been instrumental in setting up a museum of historical antiquities at the section's headquarters. more
Theodore McCann Davis (1889 – 1973)
Theodore M. Davis, MD was born on December 13, 1889 in Greenville, North Carolina. Dr. Davis saw Stern's resectoscope and, after much difficulty obtaining a used model and much practice on beef hearts to familiarize himself with the instrument, he began to modify it. His improvements to the apparatus include: a stronger loop with a larger diameter, a strengthened shaft, better insulation and with his electrical engineering background, he created what he called a "double throw switch," the precursor to today's foot switch for our transurethral resection work. more
William P. Didusch (1895 – 1981) (Curator 1971 – 1981)
William Peter Didusch (1895 - 1981) was born on June 13, 1895 in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1971, after having proposed the creation of a urological museum at the AUA headquarters, Didusch was honored at a testimonial dinner, the proceeds of which founded a new museum named after him—the William P. Didusch Museum of the American Urological Association. more
John P. Donohue (1930 – )
Born December 25, 1930 in Pelham, New York, John P. Donohue, MD received an A.B. from the College of the Holy Cross in 1954 and a medical degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1958. Dr. Donohue is best known for developing surgical techniques for retroperitoneal lymph node dissections for patients with testis cancer. more
Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931)
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. Among Edison's many inventions, from the first electronic stock ticker to the phonograph, his greatest contribution to society and more so to the medical profession was the creation of the light bulb. Its implementation in endoscopic instruments advanced the field of urology. more
Paul Ehrlich (1854 – 1915)
Paul Ehrlich was born in Strehlen, Silesia on March 14, 1854. During his college years in Breslau, he showed an interest in chemistry and histology courses. more
Lawrence Einhorn, MD (1942 – )
A Dayton, Ohio native, Lawrence Einhorn, MD received a bachelors degree from Indiana University (IU) in 1965 and his medical degree from the University of Iowa in 1968. more
Milo Ellik, MD (1905 – 1979)
The “Ellik Evacuator” has gained widespread recognition as an indispensable tool in the arsenal of urologic surgeons around the world ever since its invention by its namesake Milo Ellik in 1937. more
Rainer Engel, MD, FACS (1933 – 2018) (Curator 1993 – 2016)
Rainer Engel, MD, FACS, passionately and tirelessly served the AUA’s William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History for 23 years as curator of the museum and subsequently AUA Historian. more
Rubin H. Flocks, MD (1906 – 1975)
The son of a Baltimore clothing storeowner, Rubin Flocks attended The Johns Hopkins University for undergraduate and medical school. A superior student, he sought training in orthopedics and then in urology. more
Frederic Eugene Basil Foley, MD (1891 – 1966)
Frederic Eugene Basil Foley, MD was considered a "pioneer" in medicine, as he developed seven urologic devices, including his renowned Foley balloon catheter. Although the Foley catheter is the most notable innovation for which he will be remembered, Frederic Foley also developed a technique for treating strictures of the pelvic-ureteric junction, called the Foley Operation or the Foley Y-plasty. He invented the hydraulic operating table, rotatable resectoscope and described the first artificial sphincter. more
M. Judah Folkman, MD (1933 – 2008)
M. Judah Folkman, MD was a pioneer in the field of cancer research, originating the idea that angiogenesis—formation of new blood vessels—is a key factor in the development and growth of tumors. He is currently the director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston and professor of pediatric surgery and cell biology at Harvard Medical School. more
Brendan M. Fox, MD (1930 – ) (Historian 1998 – 2002)
Brendan M. Fox, MD is a senior faculty member and clinical professor of urology at the University of Connecticut Health Center, division of urology/department of surgery. He has served as president of the national AUA and the New England Section of the AUA, as AUA historian from 1997-2002. more
Eugene Fuller, MD (1858 – 1930)
Eugene Fuller, MD was born in Wayland, MA on May 8, 1858 and, like all male Fullers since Thomas Fuller arrived from England in 1638, went to Harvard, eventually graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1884. Dr. Fuller was an early member of the American Urological Association (1904) and became the 7th AUA President in 1910. He was the first to accomplish the removal of both intravesical and intraurethral enlargement of the prostate using the suprapubic approach. more
Donald F. Gleason, MD, PhD (1920 – 2009)
Donald F. Gleason, MD, PhD was born in Spencer, Iowa on November 20, 1920. As chief of laboratory, Dr. Gleason joined the VA Cooperative Urological Research Group study of prostate cancer. With them, he devised a grading system based on the increasing disorganization of the histologic structure of the prostate cancers. Because the Gleason grading system was easily learned from the drawings, it has been accepted and applied to the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer around the world. more
Irwin Goldstein, MD (1950 – )
Irwin Goldstein, MD holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from Brown University, with an honors thesis in biomedical engineering. Dr. Goldstein has been involved with sexual dysfunction research since the late 1970s. His interests are the physiologic investigation of sexual function and diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in men and women, including penile microvascular bypass surgery and dyspareunia surgery. more
Willard Elmer Goodwin, MD (1915 – 1998)
Willard E. Goodwin, MD was born in Los Angeles, California on July 24, 1915. Dr. Goodwin's innovative and inquisitive mind led to a number of firsts: he was the first to use prednisone to block transplant rejection and started the first urology transplant program. In endourology, he was the first to perform an antegrade pyelography. more
Ramon Guiteras, MD (1858 – 1917)
Ramon Guiteras, MD was born in Bristol, Rhode Island and attended Harvard University and eventually transferred to the medical department, graduating in 1883 with a medical degree before traveling to Paris, Vienna and Berlin to study surgery. In the early 1900s, physicians in New York’s Upper West Side discussed the need for an organization for urologists in the United States; Guiteras and his colleagues founded the American Urological Association in 1902. more
Ernest F. Hock, MD (1906 – 1996)
Ernest F. Hock, MD was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, June 9, 1906. In July 1972, Dr. Hock donated a large collection of numerous instruments—including cystoscopes, lithotritors, catheters and resectoscopes—to the newly created William P. Didusch Museum. more
Clarence V. Hodges, MD (1914 – 2001)
Clarence Hodges, MD grew up in Lead, South Dakota. While a medical student at the University of Chicago, he worked with Nobel laureate Charles Huggins and was co-author on the landmark paper, "Studies on Prostate Center: The Effect of Castration, of Estrogen and of Androgen Injection on Serum Phosphatases on Adenocarcinoma of the Prostate," which appeared in the first volume of Cancer Research in 1941. more
Harold Hopkins (1944 – 1994)
Harold Horace Hopkins was born in 1918 in Leicester, UK as one of six children. Hopkins developed his fundamentally different rod-lens optics system by mistake. The original endoscopic optic system consisted of a series of glass lenses arranged one behind the other with large gaps of air between them, but Hopkins rearranged his system to include more glass than air, reversing the older model, since glass is a much better light conductor. more
Charles Brenton Huggins, MD – Nobel Laureate in Urology (1901 – 1997)
Nobel Prize winner Charles B. Huggins, MD was born on September 2, 1901 in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he went to public school and college. His first major research dealt with induced transformation of one cell type into another, transforming fibrous tissue into bone by implanting bladder epithelium in a different host site. more
José Iglesias (1904 – 1979)
José Iglesias was born in Havana, Cuba. He became interested in studying and researching prostate and bladder tumors, which led him to design the first Iglesias Resectoscope in 1945. This scope, which allowed one-handed resection of the prostate, was used by many urologists throughout the world. more
Louis Ignarro (1941 – )
Louis Ignarro spent the first two decades of his life in Long Beach, New York City where his family settled after immigrating from Italy in the 1920s. Ignarro eventually went on to study Pharmacy and Chemistry at Columbia University in New York City. more
Hugh Judge Jewett, MD (1903 – 1990)
Hugh Judge Jewett, MD was born on September 26, 1903 in Baltimore, Maryland. He entered the Hopkins School of Medicine in 1926; after obtaining his medical degree, Dr. Jewett trained under Hugh Hampton Young, MD and finished his urology training in August 1936. His entire practice was centered at Hopkins where he became an associate editor of The Journal of Urology® in 1946, assuming full editorship in 1966. That same year he became a full professor as well as president of the AUA. He remained editor of The Journal until 1977. more
Joseph Kaufman, MD (1921 – 1999)
Joseph Kaufman, MD was born on February 10, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut. A sought-after speaker and prolific writer, he also was on the editorial board of nine different journals and belonged to more than 30 professional societies. An innovator, Dr. Kaufman designed several early incontinence devices. more
Edward L. Keyes Jr., MD (1873 – 1949)
Edward L. Keyes, Jr., MD was the 10th AUA President, a Professor of Urology in New York City, an aesthete, polyglot, and poet who, as his biographer PJ Stahl wrote was “among the best known urologists in America” (Stahl PJ et al. J Urol 176: 1946-1951, 2006). more
Adolph A. Kutzmann, MD (1896 – 1982)
Adolph Aaron Kutzmann, MD was born in November 1896 in Chicago, Illinois. He moved to California where he received his entire education—from grade school through medical school—and, in 1925, entered the private practice of urology in Los Angeles (LA). Dr. Kutzmann was certified in 1935 as one of the first members of the American Board of Urology. more
Ralph R. Landes, MD (1911 – 1989) (Historian 1965 – 1980)
Ralph Landes, MD, head of urology at Danville, VA., succeeded Wirt Dakin, MD as AUA Historian in 1966. Like Dr. Dakin, he planned to put together a history of the AUA for the diamond jubilee. Numerous requests to the section historians for submission of their respective histories went unanswered, and he too abandoned his project. more
Jack Lapides, MD (1914 – 1995)
Jack Lapides, MD was born in 1914 in Rochester, New York. Dr. Lapides published extensively and concentrated on topics pertaining to bladder physiology and the neuropathic bladder. His greatest contribution was simple but revolutionary: the demonstration of the safety and bladder preservation of clean, intermittent catheterization. more
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723)
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, born in Delft, Holland on October 24, 1632, improved the ocular lens to make monumental contributions to microscopy. more
Alexander von Lichtenberg, MD (1880 – 1949)
Alexander von Lichtenberg, MD was born on January 20, 1880 in Budapest, Hungary. Heidelberg he also got to know Fritz Voelcker, MD, eight years his senior, who became a genitourinary surgeon. The two of them eventually founded the "Zeitschrift für Urologische Chirurgie." more
Harry E. Lichtwardt, MD (1918 – 2012) (Historian 1988 – 1998)
Harry Lichtwardt, MD was born in Brazil, but received his education at Oberlin College in Ohio. Dr. Lichtwardt was a fellow at the American College of Surgeons, held many posts including president of the North Central Section of the AUA, served on numerous committees for the national AUA and became the AUA Historian 1988. He held that position until 1998. more
Larry I. Lipshultz, MD (1942 – )
Larry I. Lipshultz, MD, professor of the Scott Department of Urology at Baylor College of Medicine, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Franklin and Marshall College. A well known author, editor and lecturer, Dr. Lipshultz has published more than 200 scientific papers, most of them on the subject of male reproduction. more
Baron Joseph Lister, MD (1827 – 1912)
Baron Joseph Lister, MD was born in Upton, Essex, England on April 5, 1827. Dr. Lister was contemporary to French chemist Louis Pasteur, who pioneered the theory that infectious diseases were caused by germs—which could be neutralized if heated to high temperatures. The application of Pasteur's theories to the operating theater led Dr. Lister on the path that would ultimately give way to antiseptic surgical techniques. more
Tom F. Lue, MD (1947 – )
Born December 26, 1947, Tom Lue, MD graduated with highest honors from the Kaohsiung Medical College in Taiwan in 1972. Dr. Lue is an active member of numerous professional medical societies including the: AUA, American Medical Association, International Society of Impotence Research, Urological Research Society (International) and Society of Genitourinary Surgeons. more
Michael E. Moran, MD (Curator 2011 – 2019)
Michael E. Moran, MD is the former curator for the AUA William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History. more
Victor F. Marshall, MD (1913 – 2001)
Victor F. Marshall, MD was born on September 1, 1913 in Culpeper, Virginia. In 1949, with A.A. Marchetti, a gynecologist, and K.E. Krantz, then a resident, Dr. Marshall developed a procedure to treat stress urinary incontinence. The procedure, still used to day, is known as the Marshall-Marchetti-Krantz bladder suspension. more
Virginia Masters (née Johnson, 1925 – 2013)
Virginia Masters was born on February 11, 1925 in Springfield Missouri. She was raised in California, but returned to Missouri with her parents after high school to attend college. At Washington University in St. Louis, she began doing infertility research, and began working with William H. Masters in 1957. Six months into her two year research position, they began doing sexual function research. Masters and Johnson left WashU in 1964 to open the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation, and then created the Masters and Johnson Institute in 1973. more
Joseph Francis McCarthy, MD (1874 – 1965)
Joseph Francis McCarthy, MD, born June 12, 1874 in Yonkers, New York, attended a local parochial school and subsequently obtained a pharmacy degree in 1896 at the New York College of Pharmacy. Dr. McCarthy had an avid interest in diagnostic procedures and instruments. Among his best-known instruments are his foroblique lens that he designed with Reinhold Wappler of ACMI and a panendoscope for this lens system. His other instrument is based on the developments of Maximilian Stern and T.M. Davis and is still known as the Stern-McCarthy resectoscope. more
Terence Millin, MD (1903 – 1980)
Terence Millin, MD was born in County Down, Ireland in 1903. After studying at St. Andrew's College in Dublin and Trinity College, he studied medicine at Middlesex Hospital and Guy's Hospital in London. Dr. Millin created an operation for urinary incontinence in men, and by the early 1940s he was well-versed in the technique of transurethral resection. more
Earl F. Nation, MD (1910 – 2008)
Earl F. Nation, MD was an original founder of the American Osler Society and a lifelong collector and writer in his own right. Nation served as president of the American Urological Association in 1977. The AUA History Forum Award for the best paper and presentation, the AUA Earl Nation Retrospectroscope Award, was named in his honor. more
Maximilian Carl-Friedrich Nitze, MD (1848 – 1906)
Maximilian Carl-Friedrich Nitze, MD was born in September of 1848 in Berlin, Germany. He studied medicine in Heidelberg, Würzburg and Leipzig. Nitze obtained his medical degree in 1874 and made it his life's task to develop endoscopes with new properties and a new range of applications. On October 2, 1877, Nitze used a cadaver to demonstrate his "Kystoskop" and "Urethroskop" in Dresden. more
Alan W. Partin MD, PhD (1961 – )
Alan Partin received his bachelors degree in chemistry in 1983 from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, and his medical degree in 1989 from The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Partin, professor of urology at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, has both basic science and clinical interest in prognosis prediction for men with prostate cancer. Dr. Partin's laboratories and clinical and surgical interest are focused on development and testing of new and existing methods for predicting the aggressiveness of prostate cancers so that rational treatment decisions can be made by both patients and physicians. more
Philip Syng Physick, MD (1768 – 1837)
Physick received his medical degree in 1792. Physick eventually devised many urologic instruments and procedures including a lithotomy gorget, filiforms and followers, urethrotome, waxed linen bougies for urethral dilation, buckskin ligatures and a needle holder. However, he authored almost no publications. Despite this, Physick has been called the "Father of American Surgery." more
Jacob Rajfer, MD (1948 – )
Since 1980, Dr. Rajfer has headed the clinical and teaching programs in urology at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Many specialties within urology—including pediatrics, renal transplantation, oncology and andrology—have been expanded at Harbor and a number of important discoveries have resulted from the clinical and research activities at Harbor under his guidance. It was these research activities at UCLA that led to the discovery of what chemicals cause an erection and explained in detail how drugs like Viagra work in helping men with impotence. more
Shlomo Raz, MD (1938 – )
Shlomo Raz, MD was born in 1938 in Montevideo, Uruguay. After studying at the University of Montevideo (UM) and receiving his medical degree, he completed residencies in internal medicine both at UM and also abroad at Rambam University Hospital in Haifa, Israel. Dr. Raz specializes in pelvic floor disorders, prolapse, incontinence and urodynamics. more
Hans Joachim Reuter, MD (1923 – 2003)
Born on October 22, 1923 in southern Germany (Württenberg), Hans Joachim Reuter, MD was drafted in World War II and served on the Eastern Front. An injury in 1942 prompted his return to Germany, and he began medical school in Tübingen and subsequently Heidelberg, where he finished in 1950. One of his major contributions was the development of low pressure irrigation during operative endoscopy, which allowed him to develop a radical transurethral prostatectomy, totally resecting the malignant prostate, including the capsule, even in patients in their eighties, with a mortality rate of less than one percent. more
Jean François Reybard, MD (1795 – 1863)
A surgeon, Dr. Reybard gave an illustrated account of a balloon catheter in his treatise presented at the Imperial Academy of Medicine for the Argenteuil Prize in 1855. He also developed another self-retaining catheter with a little hook to retain the catheter in the bladder. more
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, PhD (1845 – 1923)
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, PhD was born in Rhenish Bavaria, was raised in Holland and attended school in Germany. On November 8, 1895, he saw electrical rays for the first time. On December 28, 1895, Roentgen published a journal article entitled “On A New Kind Of Ray” and one year later, the first X-ray image was one taken of his own hand in England. more
William Wallace Scott, MD (1913 – 2000) (Curator 1987 – 1993)
William Wallace Scott, MD (1913 - 2000) was born in Kansas City, Kansas, on January 27, 1913. Aside from his work on the prostate gland, Dr. Scott had an interest in renal transplantation. In the early 1950s he was the first—with Johan de Klerk, MD and H. William Scott, MD—to use cortisone in an effort to increase the length of survival of heterologous renal transplants in dogs. more
Thomas A. Stamey, MD (1928 – )
Thomas A. Stamey, MD was born April 26, 1928 in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. Dr. Stamey's early interest was in the field of renal vascular hypertension and renal physiology. In the early 1960s he became one of the leading researchers in the pathogenesis of urinary tract infections and subsequently immunologic characterization of prostatic infections. more
Maximilian Stern, MD (1878 – 1946)
Maximilian Stern, MD received his medical degree from the Physicians and Surgeons College of Columbia in New York City in 1900. In the early 1930s, probably within several years after he had developed the Stern resectoscope, he shifted his practice to southern Florida, but continued to practice on a limited basis in New York City until 1937. Dr. Stern encountered trouble with the AUA board when he tried to charge urologists a $5 fee for every transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). He was expelled from the AUA, and in 1933, the executive committee decided that Dr. Stern was not to be reinstated. more
Moses Swick, MD (1900 – 1985)
The rise of uroradiology pioneer Moses Swick, MD is one that moves through controversy and the anti-semitic attitudes of the early part of the 20th century. Swick worked to modify the structure of the compound, which at the time had proven side effects like vomiting, nausea and headache. He traveled to Berlin to work with Binz and Alexander von Lichtenberg to accomplish this goal. more
Bertha May Trott (1905 – 1973)
A woman of many talents, Ms. Bertha May Trott guided urology at Hopkins and the AUA for more than four decades. At the age of 18, she became Dr. Hugh Hampton Young’s personal secretary at the Brady Urologic Institute at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1923). more
Ferdinand C. Valentine, MD (1851 – 1909)
Ferdinand Valentine, MD was born on March 22, 1851 aboard his grandfather’s vessel registered in Germany. Valentine received his medical degree from what became the Missouri Medical College, graduating in 1876. He developed an interest in urology and returned to the States nine years later where he spent a few years in general practice. Valentine was one of the founders of the American Urological Association, its first secretary, and its third president. more
Ronald Virag, MD (1938 – )
Ronald Virag, MD a vascular surgeon, is known for his work with phentolamine and papaverine for erectile dysfunction during the 1980s. Born in Metz, France in 1938, Dr. Virag graduated from Paris University in 1962. After training in general and cardiovascular surgery at Paris hospitals, Dr. Virag, in 1977, created a multidisciplinary group for studying erectile dysfunction, on which he has focused since 1978. more
Robert S. Waldbaum, MD (1938 – 2023) (Historian 2002 – 2006)
Robert S. Waldbaum, MD was the historian at the William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History from 2002 until 2006. He is chief of the division of urology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, and is also a trustee of North Shore/Long Island Jewish Health System. more
Patrick Craig Walsh, MD (1938 – )
Patrick C. Walsh, MD born February 13, 1938 and raised in Akron, Ohio is the chair of urology at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Walsh published the first description of 5-alpha reductase enzyme deficiency in 1974, providing the basic framework that led to the development of the 5-alpha reductase inhibitor for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplastia (BPH). On April 26, 1982, Walsh performed the first purposeful nerve-sparing radical prostatectomy on a 52-year old patient who reported seven months later that he was potent. more
Reinhold H. Wappler, MD (1870 – 1932)
Reinhold H. Wappler was born in 1870 in Oranienbaum, Anhalt, Germany and immigrated in 1890 to New York and repaired instruments at an instrument company. A skilled designer and eventually maker of electrosurgical instruments, he pioneered high-frequency devices for medical use. more
Jean D. Wilson, MD (1932 – )
Jean D. Wilson, MD, a native of Wellington, Texas, obtained an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Texas (UT), Austin and graduated from the UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. His research is focused on the mechanisms of hormone action and, in particular, on the role of androgen action in sexual differentiation and the control of prostatic growth. more
Alan Yagoda, MD (1935 – 1995)
Alan Yagoda, MD was a professor of clinical medicine and an international expert on urological cancer. Dr. Yagoda specialized in genitourinary cancer research that included the development of a four-drug chemotherapy treatment for metastatic bladder tumors that significantly reduced the cancer in two-thirds of the patients. The treatment, known as MVAC (methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin and cisplatin), became a standard therapy. more
Hugh Hampton Young, MD (1870 – 1945)
Hugh Hampton Young, MD was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1870. In 1917, he founded The Journal of Urology® which he edited until his death in 1945. He was and still remains the longest serving Editor over the Journal’s more than 100 years in publication. more
Adrian W. Zorgniotti, MD (1925 – 1994) (Historian 1980 – 1988)
Adrian Zorgniotti, MD was historian of the AUA from 1980 – 1988. Even before he became historian, he actively corresponded with Mrs. John C. Atwood, daughter of Eugene Fuller; this correspondence eventually led to the establishment of the triennial Fuller Award in 1977. more