Rudolph Nissen

Rudolph Nissen, sometimes spelled Rudolf Nissen, was a German surgeon who lived from 1896 to 1981 and chaired surgery departments in Turkey, the United States and Switzerland. He trained under the German physicians Ludwig Aschoff and Ferdinand Sauerbruch. He completed the first pneumonectomy in 1931 and in 1948 performed an abdominal operation that extended the life of Albert Einstein by several years. The Nissen fundoplication, a surgical procedure for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease, is named after him. He wrote an autobiography published in 1969 under the title Helle Blätter, dunkle Blätter, Erinnerungen eines Chirurgen, and a selection of his writings and lectures appeared in 1997 as Fünfzig Jahre erlebter Chirurgie.