Ludwig
Guttmann is the father of organized physical activities
for the handicapped.
He created the Stoke-Mandeville
Games/Paralympics (Handicapped
Olympics).
One of Germany’s leading pre–World War II
neurosurgeons at the Jewish
Hospital in Breslau, Guttmann was
forced to flee to England in 1939. In
1944, the British government invited
him to found the National Spinal Injuries
Centre at Stoke-Mandeville near
London, and appointed him the Centre’s
director, a position he held until
1966.
The Paralympics became an international
event in 1952 and is held every
four years, usually following and in the
same city as the quadrennial Olympic
Games.
In 1960, Dr. Guttmann founded
the British Sports Association of the
Disabled. He has received Great
Britain’s Order of the British Empire
and Commander of the British Empire,
and he has been honored by 18
other nations. |
