Nand Peeters

Ferdinand "Nand" Peeters (1918 to 1998) was a Belgian obstetrician and gynecologist whose research led directly to Anovlar, the first combined oral contraceptive pill introduced outside the United States, in 1961. He was born in Mechelen, the son of a surgeon who founded his own clinic there, studied at the Catholic University of Leuven and finished his training in a maternity ward in Bruges. In 1946 he settled as an obstetrician and gynecologist in Turnhout, where there had been none, and brought perinatal infant mortality down sharply in his first year. From 1951 he headed the Maria Gabriël Maternity and the gynecology department of the municipal Saint-Elisabeth hospital, introduced new techniques such as echography, and in 1953 founded the Saint-Elisabeth nursing school, where he taught without pay. He worked with Schering AG on the hormone combination that became Anovlar, and his research also contributed substantially to the treatment of Rh-disease. He delivered more than 30,000 babies, retired in 1986, and died in Turnhout in 1998.