<P> From 1932 to 1945, he was a member of the Nazi Party . At the start of World War II, he became a medical officer . In the course of his service, he rose to the rank of Major, until he was captured and put into a U.S. POW camp . Upon his release in 1945, he worked as a lumberjack and then as a country medic in the Black Forest with his wife . In 1950, he began practice as a urologist in Bad Kreuznach . </P> <P> During the time of his imprisonment, his paper was read by André Frédéric Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards . They developed ways of applying his technique to heart disease diagnosis and research . In 1954, he was given the Leibniz Medal of the German Academy of Sciences . In 1956, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Cournand, Richards, and Forßmann . </P> <P> After winning the Nobel Prize, he was given the position of Honorary Professor of Surgery and Urology at the University of Mainz . In 1961, he became an honorary professor at the National University of Córdoba . In 1962, he became a member of the Executive Board of the German Society of Surgery . He also became a member of the American College of Chest Physicians, honorary member of the Swedish Society of Cardiology, the German Society of Urology (de), and the German Child Welfare Association . </P> <P> He and Elsbet had six children: Klaus Forßmann in 1934, Knut Forßmann in 1936, Jörg Forßmann in 1938, Wolf Forßmann in 1939 (who was first to isolate the atrial natriuretic peptide), Bernd Forßmann in 1940 (who helped develop the first clinical lithotriptor), and Renate Forßmann in 1943 . </P>

Werner forssmann and catheterization of the heart 1929