Wu Yingkai

Wu Yingkai (1910 to 2003) was a Chinese surgeon and epidemiologist, born in Xinmin in what is now Liaoning and a member of the Manchu people. He trained at Mukden Medical College, graduating in 1933, then taught and researched surgery at Peking Union Medical College. In 1940 he became the first Chinese surgeon to resect a carcinoma of the oesophagus, and he later performed the first operation in China to close a patent ductus arteriosus and the first pericardiectomy for constrictive pericarditis there. After studying thoracic surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, he led surgery departments in Chongqing and Beijing and served as president of the Chest Hospital of the People's Liberation Army, which became Fuwai Hospital. From 1958 he turned to the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease, founded a Beijing institute for heart, lung and blood vessel diseases, and worked with the World Health Organization on the MONICA trends project. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and died in Beijing at the age of 93.