Noordenbos, Willy

William Noordenbos, a Dutch neurosurgeon, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on 11 August 1910. His father was Willem Noordenbos, a general surgeon and later dean of the medical school at the University of Amsterdam; his mother, Jacoba Cornelia Noordenbos-Kapteijn--the daughter of J. Kapteijn, a distinguished academic astronomer--was one of the first female doctors in the Netherlands. William Noordenbos studied medicine in Amsterdam, finished and received his degree from the University of Edinburgh (1937), continued surgical training in Scotland, and returned to the Netherlands in late 1939. During World War II, Willem was held in a concentration camp and William was imprisoned; both terms were brief. Throughout the 1940s Noordenbos worked as a clinical neurosurgeon at the University of Amsterdam Surgical Clinic; in 1950 he spent a half-year as the only neurosurgeon in the Dutch East Indies; returned to Amsterdam to begin at Wilhelmina-Gasthuis (University of Amsterdam); he set up the hospital's department of neurosurgery. Noordenbos's only monograph, "Pain: problems pertaining to the transmission of nerve impulses" (Elsevier, 1959), is credited by some with launching the modern era of pain research. Noordenbos researched and wrote about pain, neural function and surgical technique, was involved in the development of a taxonomy of pain, was a founding member of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), and was instrumental in arranging for the publication of its journal, Pain, by Elsevier in Amsterdam. An avid sailor his whole life, Noordenbos built a number of boats; he and his wife made transatlantic crossings in 1962 and 1978. William Noordenbos died in March 1990.