August Bier

August Bier (1861-1949) was a German surgeon born in Bad Arolsen who later served as chief surgeon at Berlin Charite hospital. On 16 August 1898, while at the University of Kiel, he became the first to perform an operation under spinal anesthesia, injecting cocaine into the cerebrospinal fluid. He later described intravenous regional anesthesia of a limb using a tourniquet, a technique still known today as a Bier block and widely used in modern surgery. He also helped establish sports medicine as an academic discipline and received the Cameron Prize and the German National Prize for Art and Science for his work.