Nicholas Harold Lloyd Ridley

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Ridley, like Galileo, van Gogh and Darwin before him, was very unpopular in his time, yet his work saves the eyesight of millions of people across the world every year.

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During WWII, Ridley treated RAF casualties with horrendous eye injuries, as a result of cannon shells exploding into cockpit canopies, shooting slithers of glass and perspex into the eyes of wounded pilots. He observed that plastic splinters lodged in the eyes did not trigger rejection while glass splinters did, leading him to propose the use of plastic implant lenses to correct cataract.  In 1949 at St Thomas' Hospital, Ridley successfully performed the first implant of an intraocular lens. The operation was televised - another first.  The first implant surgery performed in the US was in 1952 at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia.

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"Professional opposition, established one of the greatest

milestones in medical history" Pearce Wright