Themistocles Gluck

Themistocles Gluck (1853 to 1942) was a German physician and surgeon, born on 30 November 1853 in Iași, Moldavia, who died in Berlin on 25 April 1942. He is best known as a pioneer of joint replacement. In 1890 in Berlin he first made implants from ivory and performed the first documented total wrist arthroplasty, and in 1891 he replaced the knee of a patient with tuberculosis of the joint using an ivory implant of hinged design. He also won the first state prize of the Berlin University for his work on nerve suturing and nerve regeneration, and gained a worldwide reputation for his laryngeal surgery. The French surgeons Louis Léopold Ollier and Jules Péan recognised his importance in the 1890s, yet as a surgeon outside the university he waited a long time for academic recognition and became an associate professor only in 1922, at the age of 70. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize, without success, because his work was by then regarded as too old.