Einstein gets operated and Nissen is his surgeon

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Albert Einstein

In 1921, at 42 years of age, Einstein was a Nobel Laureate. He was a celebrated physicist, a genius, and a sought after speaker. The next year, he was representing Germany on International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. Based out of Berlin, he was touring around the world. In 1933, he was in the united States, when Hitler took over power in Germany. Being a Jew, Einstein decided not to return back. He was one of the German-Jew refugees in the United States.

Rudolph Nissen

Rudolph Nissen was another German Jew, who after serving in the German army during the first world war, was back in Munich in 1921, after completing his medical studies. He excelled in thoracic surgery, initially at Munich, and then in Berlin. He was a bold surgeon, and was performing more than 1500 major surgeries in a year. In 1933, prompted by rising German Nationalism, and anti-jew sentiments, he along with another 100 German-Jew scientists, relocated to Istanbul, Turkey as a chief surgeon. Here he developed a surgical technique of (wrapping stomach around esophagus), which we know as “Nissen’s fundoplication“. This procedure improved symptoms of heart-burn.

In 1939, the government in Turkey required all foreigners to work in local language. Nissen relocated once again, this time to New York. By 1941, he was working as a Chief thoracic Surgeon at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn.

Einstein’s surgery

Albert Einstein was having frequent Abdominal pain. Doctors diagnosed it as a stomach ulcer, and he consulted Nissen. In 1948, he was taken in for a Surgery. When opened, Einstein had no ulcers, but a 10-cm Aneurysmal dilatation of aorta – a widened weakened part of largest human blood-vessel. This was likely to rupture. Nissen stabilised this aneurysm by wrapping it with “cellophane”. This must have been an impromptu decision, with a hope that cellophane would fibrose the wall of this aneurysm. This was ingenious effort as more modern aneurysm repair surgeries were developed more than a decade later.

Einstein left the hospital three weeks after surgery and went on to continue his research for another seven years. In 1955, he again had abdominal pain due to the leaking aneurysm. At age 76, Einstein refused another surgery. He told his doctors, “I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.” He died on 18th April 1955.

Meanwhile, in 1952 Nissen relocated once again, from New York to Basel in Switzerland. He worked and lived here, till his death in 1981. He is one of the few surgeons (like Bilroth, Bassini and Whipple) who have a procedure named after them.