Eugen Pólya

Jenő Sándor Pólya, known in German as Eugen Alexander Pólya, was a Hungarian surgeon from Budapest, born on 30 April 1876 and thought to have died in 1944. He was the brother of George Pólya, the mathematician who became a professor at Stanford University. He studied in Budapest, took his medical doctorate in 1898, qualified as a lecturer in surgical anatomy there in 1909 and gained the title of professor in 1914. He is remembered for the Reichel-Pólya operation, a posterior gastroenterostomy that modifies the Billroth II operation and is named jointly with the German surgeon Friedrich Paul Reichel. Between the two world wars American surgeons visited him in Budapest to watch his technique, and in 1939 the American College of Surgeons made him an honorary member. Reportedly he was murdered by the Nazis during the Siege of Budapest, though his body was never recovered.