Heinrich Lamm (January 19, 1908 – July 12, 1974), a Jewish German-American

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

, was a pioneer in using

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass ( silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair Hair is a protein filament that grows ...

s for image transmission, and was the first to make a fiber-optic

endoscope An endoscope is an inspection instrument composed of image sensor, optical lens, light source and mechanical device, which is used to look deep into the body by way of openings such as the mouth or anus. A typical endoscope applies several modern t ...

. When Lamm was a medical student in 1930, he developed the first flexible fiber-optic bundle capable of transmitting images around curves.The Birth of Fiber Optics
/ref> His initial purpose was to check inaccessible parts inside the human body. He reported his experiments, but the imaging quality was poor. Lamm's effort to file a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

failed due to a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

patent already filed by

Clarence Hansell Clarence Weston Hansell (January 20, 1898 – ) was an American research engineer who pioneered investigation into the biological effects of ion air. He was granted over 300 US patents, including, in the 1930s, a precursor to the modern ink jet pri ...

Life

Heinrich Lamm was the first of two sons of Ignaz Lamm and his wife Martha (Pinczower). His brother was the journalist Hans Lamm. Heinrich Lamm studied medicine in Breslau and

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

. Because of his Jewish origin, the Nazis' seizure of control in Germany undermined his hopes of an academic career. He succeeded in moving his family to the United States, where he practiced medicine in

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the List of United States cities by populat ...

, and later

La Feria, Texas La Feria is a city in Cameron County, Texas, United States. Its population was 7,302 at the time of the 2010 census. It is part of the Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville, the Matamoros–Brownsville, and the McAllen–Edinburg–Mission me ...

. Lamm was married to Annie Lamm, also an M.D., and they had two children: Michael, an automotive writer and book publisher and Miriam, who owned and operated a personnel agency.

Life

References

Further reading