Heinrich Willi

Heinrich Willi (1900 to 1971) was a Swiss pediatrician who specialised in neonatology and is remembered as a co-describer of Prader-Willi syndrome. Born in Chur, he qualified in medicine at the University of Zurich in 1925, trained in pathology and then in pediatrics at the Zurich Children's Hospital under Guido Fanconi, and wrote a doctoral thesis on childhood leukemia in 1936. In 1937 he became director of neonatology at what is now the University Hospital of Zurich and held the post until he retired in 1970. He presided over the Swiss Society of Paediatrics from 1959 to 1962. With Andrea Prader and Alex Labhart he described in 1956 the genetic disorder of childhood obesity and intellectual disability that bears his name, a report that drew little attention until the 1960s. His other interests included the effect of gestational diabetes on the newborn and the early use of bone marrow aspiration to diagnose blood disease. He died in Zurich in 1971.