Martin Kirschner

Martin Kirschner was a German surgeon, born in Breslau on 28 October 1879 and died in Heidelberg on 30 August 1942. He was the son of Margarethe Kalbeck and of Martin Kirschner senior, who became Lord Mayor of Berlin. He studied at Freiburg, Strasbourg, Zurich and Munich, took his doctorate at Strasbourg in 1904, and trained under Rudolf von Renvers in Berlin and then with Erwin Payr at Greifswald and Königsberg. He became professor of surgery at Königsberg in 1916 and moved to the chair at Tübingen in 1927. On 18 March 1924 he performed the first successful pulmonary artery embolectomy, which is Trendelenburg's operation, and he published the first stereotactic operation on a human in 1933, ablating the trigeminal nerve with an electrode to treat trigeminal neuralgia. The Kirschner wire carries his name.