Izidor Papo

Izidor Papo (1913-1996) was a Yugoslav surgeon who rose to the rank of colonel general and served for more than thirty years as chief surgeon of the Yugoslav People's Army. Born in Ljubuški, then part of Austria-Hungary, into a Bosnian Sephardi Jewish family, he grew up in Mostar and studied medicine at the University of Zagreb, graduating in 1937. He joined the partisan army in 1942 as a doctor and later trained at the military medical academy in Leningrad before heading the surgical department of the army medical academy in Belgrade. After the war he turned to heart, lung and respiratory surgery, and his greatest achievements were in cardiac surgery: he is credited with about 2,000 open heart operations and with giving some 400 patients artificial heart valves. He rose from assistant professor in 1950 to professor in 1956, presided over the surgical section of the Serbian Medical Society from 1963 to 1966, and became a full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1968. He published 217 works and wrote the textbook Ratna hirurgija (War surgery). He retired in 1982 and died in Belgrade in 1996.