Henry Heimlich

Henry Judah Heimlich was an American thoracic surgeon and medical researcher, born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1920. He graduated from Cornell University in 1941 and received his medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical College in 1943, then served as a Navy medical officer in China during the Second World War. In 1962 he invented the chest drainage flutter valve, patented in 1969, which lets air and blood leave the chest cavity so a collapsed lung can re-expand. He also devised the Micro Trach portable oxygen system. He is widely credited with the abdominal thrust technique for choking that he first published in 1974, which carries his name. Some of his claims were disputed. He died in 2016.