Dr. Martín Abadi
Herman P. Schwan EMERITUS
Emeritus Member, European Academy of Engineering
Aachen, Germany
More Info
  • 1992
  • Biomedical Engineering (B.M.E.)
More Info
  • 1992
  • Biomedical Engineering (B.M.E.)
Election Remark
Herman P. Schwan (7 August 1915 – 17 March 2005) was a biomedical engineer and biophysicist, recognized as the "founding father of biomedical engineering." He was born in Aachen, Germany, and died in his home Radnor, Pennsylvania.
 
Schwan was born from a science-influenced family.During his career Schwan did much to improve the emerging field of biomedical engineering, developed its first PhD program, and produced more than 300 technical papers and gave countless lectures.

He is best known for many biophysical studies related to electrical properties of cells and tissues, and on non-thermal mechanisms of interaction of fields with biological systems.

He innovative works include the large low-frequency dielectric dispersion that is found in biological material, and electrically induced forces on cells.

He was the pioneer in recognizing the possible health hazards of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields.

He proposed a safe limit for human exposure to microwave energy of 100 W/m2 (based on thermal analysis) to the U.S. Navy in 1953, which became the basis for the present IEEE C95.1 safety standards used in the western world.
 
He was a Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS. He received the 1983 IEEE Edison Medal, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Foreign Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society.
 
In 1985 he was awarded the first d'Arsonval Award of the Bioelectromagnetics Society.
 
The Herman P. Schwan prize of the International Conference on Electrical Bioimpedance (ICEBE) and the International Society for Electrical Bioimpedance (ISEBI) was initiated in 2001 in his honour and is awarded once every three years.

The Herman P. Schwan Award has been presented to: dr. Ron Pethig (United Kingdom, 2001); dr. Brian Brown (United Kingdom, 2004); dr. Eberhardt Gersing (Germany, 2007); dr. Sverre Grimnes (Norway, 2010); dr. David Holder (United Kingdom, 2013); dr. Jan H. Meijer (the Netherlands, 2016).

In 1992, he was elected as founding member of the European Academy of Engineering and was promoted as Emeritus member in 2000.