Allen Whipple

Allen Oldfather Whipple was an American surgeon, born in 1881 to missionary parents in Urmia in what is now Iran, who is remembered for the pancreatic cancer operation that bears his name, the Whipple procedure, and for Whipple triad, the diagnostic triad for insulinoma. He took his medical degree at Columbia in 1908 and was professor of surgery at Columbia and the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center from 1921 to 1946. He began work on resection of the pancreas, pancreaticoduodenectomy, in 1935 and shortened it to a one-stage operation in 1940, performing 37 of them in his lifetime. He supervised Virginia Apgar in her surgical residency and advised her toward anesthesiology, and he helped found the American Board of Surgery. He died in 1963.