Willem Einthoven
Dutch physiologist · Netherlands · Scientists · Lived 1860 to 1927 · aged 67
Willem Einthoven is read about 127 times a day, in 75 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He made the heartbeat readable. Before Einthoven's electrocardiograph, the electrical rhythm of the heart was essentially invisible to medicine - a mystery physicians could only guess at through a stethoscope.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
.jpg?width=1200)
.jpg?width=1200)
.jpg?width=1200)
Awards
In their orbit
About this person
Willem Einthoven was born on 21 May 1860 in what is now Indonesia, trained as a medical doctor in the Netherlands, and turned his attention to physiology. In 1895 he invented the first practical electrocardiograph, a device that could record the heart's electrical activity with precision - transforming cardiology from educated guesswork into measurable science. The work earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 "for the discovery of the mechanism of the electrocardiogram." He died on 29 September 1927, three years after the prize, having given doctors a way to see what had always been hidden.
Scientists from the Netherlands 6
Fame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.