Richard Bing

Richard John Bing (October 12, 1909 in Nuremberg, Germany – November 8, 2010 in La Cañada Flintridge, California) was a cardiologist who made significant contributions to his field of study.

Born in Nuremberg to a hops merchant and a professional singer, he studied at the Conservatory at the Nuremberg Gymnasium but also took an interest in medicine. Trying to determine which path to take, after an indifferent reception from Richard Strauss and being inspired by Arrowsmith, he went into medicine, earning a degree at the University of Munich in 1934. His family—who were Jewish—left Nazi Germany shortly thereafter, and he studied further at the University of Bern, and was awarded another medical degree in 1935.

Bing then took a fellowship in Copenhagen at the Carlsberg Biological Institute. There he was visited by the Nobel prize-winning surgeon Alexis Carrel and aviator Charles Lindbergh. From that meeting came an invitation to work at the Rockefeller Institute in New York on the early development of machine perfusion. Following his work at the Rockefeller Institute, he took a position in physiology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he worked under Allen Whipple.

He took an assistant residency at Johns Hopkins University in order to allow him to join the Medical Corps. After two years in the Corps, he returned to Hopkins as a junior faculty member. There, he did pioneering research into cardiac metabolism, enabling the accurate measurement of the effects of drugs and drug candidates on the heart. After stints at Washington University and Wayne State University, he moved to California, and joined the Huntington Medical Research Institutes. There, he continued research, studying the chemistry of heart attacks, developing techniques for high-speed photography of the coronary vessels, and measurement of blood flow using nitric oxide.

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