Ludwig Guttmann

Ludwig Guttmann

Sir Ludwig Guttmann CBE FRS (3 July 1899 – 18 March 1980) was a German neurologist who started the Stoke Mandeville Games. That was a sporting event for people with disabilities. It developed into the Paralympic Games. He was a Jewish doctor who fled Nazi Germany just before the start of the Second World War., Guttmann was one of the first people who organized physical activities for people with disabilities.

1933, Guttmann was working in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) as a neurosurgeon and lecturing at the University of Breslau. in 1933 under the Nuremberg Laws he was stopped. He was sent to work at the Breslau Jewish Hospital, where he became medical director in 1937. In early 1939, Guttmann and his family left Germany because of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. He was sent to Portugal to treat a friend of the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar. The Council for Assisting Refugee Academics helped him to move to Oxford in March 1939. He did research at the Nuffield Department of Neurosurgery in the Radcliffe Infirmary.

In September 1943, the British government asked Guttmann to establish the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. The Royal Air Force was worried about the treatment and rehabilitation of pilots with spine injuries. It was the first specialist unit for treating spinal injuries in the United Kingdom. Guttman was the director until 1966. He organised the first Stoke Mandeville Games for disabled war veterans, which was held at the hospital on 29 July 1948, the same day as the opening of the London Olympics. They all had spinal cord injuries and competed in wheelchairs.

In 1961, he setup the International Medical Society of Paraplegia, now the International Spinal Cord Society.