Ophthalmologists

Pictured Right: Watercolour of a nun with a bleeding eye, Arzneibuch Compendium of popular medicine and surgery, 1675

Below is a list but please add any Ophthalmologists profiles on Geni to this project.
You may also be interested in Corrective VIsion Opticians

18th–19th centuries

• Joseph Forlenze
• Theodor Leber discovered Leber's congenital amaurosis, Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, Leber's miliary aneurysm, and Leber's stellate neuroretinitis.
• Sir William Adams (UK) was the founder of Exeter's West of England Eye Infirmary.
• Carl Ferdinand von Arlt (1812–1887), the elder (Austrian), proved that myopia is largely due to an excessive axial length, published influential textbooks on eye disease, and ran annual eye clinics in needy areas long before the concept of volunteer eye camps became popular. His name is still attached to some disease signs, e.g., von Arlt's line in trachoma. His son Ferdinand Ritter von Arlt, the younger, was also an ophthalmologist.
• Jacques Daviel (France) claimed to be the 'father' of modern cataract surgery in that he performed extracapsular extraction instead of needling the cataract or pushing it back into the vitreous. He is said to have carried out the technique on 206 patients in 1752–53, of which 182 were reported to be successful. These figures are not very credible, given the total lack of both anaesthesia and aseptic technique at that time.
• Frans Cornelis Donders (1818–1889) (Dutch) published pioneering analyses of ocular biomechanics, intraocular pressure, glaucoma, and physiological optics. He made possible the prescribing of combinations of spherical and cylindrical lenses to treat astigmatism.
• Joseph Forlenze (1757–1833) (Italy), specialist in cataract surgery, became popular during the First French Empire, healing, among many, personalities such as the minister Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis and the poet Ponce Denis Lebrun. He was nominated by Napoleon "chirurgien oculiste of the lycees, the civil hospices and all the charitable institutions of the departments of the Empire".[27] He was known also for his free interventions, mainly in favour of poor people.
• Allvar Gullstrand
• John Frederick France (1817–1900), in 1847, succeeded the late Mr John Morgan as lecturer on Ophthalmic Surgery at the school. In 1855, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons; he was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries France edited, with notes, the second edition of Morgan's work on Lectures on Diseases of the Eye (1848) and was a voluminous writer himself on ophthalmic subjects. To the Guys Hospital Reports he contributed 17 papers between 1848 and 1861, and numerous other papers appeared in various periodical publications. He was one of the authors who supported the theory of causal connection between diabetes and cataract, which at that time was still questioned by many physicians and he used, for fixation of the eyeball, a simple artery forceps (without spring lock) in 27 patients and had success in all of them. France also published clinical observations about eye injuries, paralysis of the pupil, and ptosis. and in the same journal (October 1845) he reported about the successful extraction of a traumatic calcified cataract from the anterior chamber.[28]
• Albrecht von Graefe (1828–1870) (Germany) Along with Helmholtz and Donders, one of the 'founding fathers' of ophthalmology as a specialty. He was a brilliant clinician and charismatic teacher who had an international influence on the development of ophthalmology, and was a pioneer in mapping visual field defects and diagnosis and treatment of glaucoma. He introduced a cataract extraction technique that remained the standard for over 100 years, and many other important surgical techniques such as iridectomy. He rationalised the use of many ophthalmically important drugs, including mydriatics and miotics. He also was the founder of one of the earliest ophthalmic societies (German Ophthalmological Society, 1857) and one of the earliest ophthalmic journals (Graefe's Archives of Ophthalmology). He was probably the most important ophthalmologist of the 19th century.
• Allvar Gullstrand (Sweden) was a Nobel Prize-winner in 1911 for his research on the eye as a light-refracting apparatus. He described the 'schematic eye', a mathematical model of the human eye based on his measurements known as the 'optical constants' of the eye. His measurements are still used today.
• Hermann von Helmholtz, a great German polymath, invented the ophthalmoscope (1851) and published important work on physiological optics, including colour vision (1850s).
• Socrate Polara (1800–1860, Italy) founded the first dedicated ophthalmology clinic in Sicily in 1829, entirely as a philanthropic endeavor; later he was appointed as the first director of the ophthalmology department at the Grand Hospital of Palermo, Sicily, in 1831 after the Sicilian government became convinced of the importance of state support for the specialization.[29]
• Herman Snellen (Netherlands) introduced the Snellen chart to study visual acuity.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (United Kingdom) was a Scottish writer, primarily of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He was trained in, but apparently never practiced ophthalmology.
• Jose Rizal (Philippines), a Philippines' national hero, was an ophthalmologist. One of his works was an operation on both his mother's eyes for removal of a cataract.

20th–21st centuries

• William Bates and his assistant
• William Horatio Bates (1860–1931) (United States) was creator of the unorthodox Bates method, and credited for being the founder of the Natural Vision Improvement movement.
• Vladimir Petrovich Filatov (1875–1956) (Ukraine) contributed to the medical world the tube flap grafting method, corneal transplantation, and preservation of grafts from cadaver eyes and tissue therapy. He founded The Filatov Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy, Odessa, one of the leading eye-care institutes in the world.
• Ignacio Barraquer (1884–1965) (Spain), in 1917, invented the first motorized vacuum instrument (erisophake) for intracapsular cataract extraction. He founded of the Barraquer Clinic in 1941 and the Barraquer Institute in 1947 in Barcelona, Spain.
• Tsutomu Sato (Japan) Pioneer in incisional refractive surgery, including techniques for astigmatism and the invention of radial keratotomy for myopia.
• Jules Gonin (1870–1935) (Switzerland) was the "father of retinal detachment surgery".
• Sir Harold Ridley (United Kingdom), in 1949, may have been the first to successfully implant an artificial intraocular lens after observing that plastic fragments in the eyes of wartime pilots were well tolerated. He fought for decades against strong reactionary opinions to have the concept accepted as feasible and useful.
• Charles Schepens (Belgium) was the "father of modern retinal surgery" and developer of the Schepens indirect binocular ophthalmoscope whilst at Moorfields Eye Hospital. He was the founder of the Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. This premier research institute is associated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
• Marshall M. Parks was the "father of pediatric ophthalmology".
• José Ignacio Barraquer (1916–1998) (Spain) was the "father of modern refractive surgery". In the 1960s, he developed lamellar techniques, including keratomileusis and keratophakia, as well as the first microkeratome and corneal microlathe.
• Tadeusz Krwawicz (Poland), in 1961, developed the first cryoprobe for intracapsular cataract extraction.
• Svyatoslav Fyodorov (Russia) was the "father of ophthalmic microsurgery". He improved and popularized the radial keratotomy, invented a surgical cure for cataract, and developed the scleroplasty.
• Charles Kelman (United States) developed the ultrasound and mechanized irrigation and aspiration system for phacoemulsification, first allowing cataract extraction through a small incision.
• Wui Seng, Quah (Malaysia) developed first radial-enhanced laser treatment for glaucoma patients leading to the development of the modern glaucoma patient program.
• Ioannis Pallikaris (Greece) performed the first laser-assisted intrastromal keratomileusis (LASIK) surgery.
• Fred Hollows (New Zealand/Australia) pioneered programs in Nepal, Eritrea, and Vietnam, and among Australian aborigines, including the establishment of cheap laboratory production of intraocular lenses in Nepal and Eritrea.
• Marco Abbondanza (Italy) developed the mini asymmetric radial keratotomy for keratoconus and astigmatism, and popularized the cross-linking.
• Ian Constable (Australia) founded the Lions Eye Institute in Perth, Western Australia, the largest eye research institute in the Southern Hemisphere and home to 10 ophthalmologists.
• Rand Paul (United States) is a current member of the United States Senate from Kentucky.
• L. L. Zamenhof (Poland) created the Esperanto language.
• Bashar al-Assad (Syria) is the President of Syria. He did his ophthalmology residency in a hospital in London.
• Syed Modasser Ali (Bangladesh) is an ophthalmic surgeon who used to be the Director-General of Health Services for the government of Bangladesh. He wrote the first book on community ophthalmology (public eye health).
• Dr Albrecht Hennig (Germany) pioneered the "fish-hook" technique enabling his team to complete more than 48,000 cataract operations in Nepal in 2004. He was nominated as 'Eye Health Hero' at the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness 9th General Assembly in September 2012.
• Dr. Paul T. Finger (United States) pioneered the use of palladium-103 plaque radiation to treat choroidal melanoma and three-dimensional and high-frequency ultrasound to image intraocular tumors
• Josef Flammer (Switzerland) discovers the association of vascular dysregulations and glaucoma, in particular normal-tension glaucoma. The condition which can include low blood pressure, tinnitus, cold hands and feet and certain psychological characteristics has been termed Flammer syndrome
• Herbert Lightfoot Eason (1874–1948) was superintendent at Guy's Hospital, London, president of the General Medical Council, and vice chancellor (1935–1937) of the University of London.

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