born Sept. 24, 1895, Paris, Fr.
died Feb. 19, 1988, Great Barrington, Mass., U.S.
French-born U.S. physician and physiologist.
He shared a 1956 Nobel Prize with Dickinson W. Richards (b. 1895
d. 1973) and Werner Forssmann for discoveries on heart catheterization and circulatory changes. Cournand and Richards perfected Forssmann's cardiac catheterization procedure for studying the functioning of diseased hearts to more accurately diagnose underlying anatomic defects. They also used the catheter in the pulmonary artery, improving diagnosis of lung diseases.