He will be best remembered for his creation of the fiberoptic endoscope, which revolutionized gastroenterology research, practice, and patient care. Dr. Hirschowitz was born in Bethel, South Africa, on May 29, 1925. His family had migrated from Eastern

Europe and Russia to become successful farmers in South Africa. He graduated from high school at the age of 15 years, and although he initially entertained a career in engineering, he elected to pursue medicine. After high school he entered medical school at the prestigious University of Witwatersrand where he received a Bachelor of Science in Physiology in 1944 and his medical degree in 1947. This was then followed by an internship at Johannesburg Selleckchem GSK1120212 General Hospital. He completed residency at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London under the tutelage of a cardiologist Sir John McMichael. Although he toyed with the idea

of cardiology, he had prior exposure to gastrointestinal surgery while in South Africa and later with Avery Jones, a charismatic gastroenterologist working at the Central Middlesex Hospital, and one of the early pioneers of gastroenterology and endoscopy. His doctoral dissertation in England in 1953 was on the physiology of pepsin and pepsinogen secretion. He subsequently traveled to work at the University of Michigan with an American Cancer Society Fellowship Grant for two years. While there, he further studied acid secretion BIBW2992 mw both from a physiologic and pharmacologic perspective with the noted gastrointestinal physiologist Horace Davenport. Through a journal club, he learned of an article in Nature from England describing fiberoptics OSBPL9 and light transmission. He traveled

to England to meet with the authors of this paper and learned first-hand about glass fibers. Although he was well versed in the use of the Schindler endoscope, he quickly recognized the potential for fiberoptics and its application to endoscopy. He then worked with Dr. Wilbur Peters, an optical physicist at Michigan, and later with Larry Curtis, a young physics student, to adapt the idea of fiberoptic technology to endoscopy. Much of this work was done with ad hoc materials and donations of glass from Dow Corning, but ultimately their proof of concept was realized. The light fibers were used to develop a prototype flexible endoscope, and their original work with this prototype was presented in May 1957 at a meeting of the American Gastroscopic Society in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where their work was heard by Rudolph Schindler himself as well as other noted endoscopists. Subsequently, the patent for this device was provided. The original device, which Hirschowitz first tested on himself by swallowing the endoscope without sedation, was presented to the Smithsonian Museum of American History in 1989 where it currently resides.