Izidor Papo

Izidor Papo (December 31, 1913 – October 14, 1996) was a renowned surgeon, general, army medical academy chief and academician.

Papo was a Sephardi Jew born in Ljubuški, Austria-Hungary, in what later became Bosnia and Herzegovina. He finished high school in Mostar in 1932 with an excellent record. Papo enrolled in the Medical faculty of the University of Zagreb on which he graduated on time with a perfect 10.0 record and then worked as a doctor at the state hospital in Sarajevo up to 1941.

Following the Axis powers' invasion of Yugoslavia, he joined the national liberation movement in 1941 and the partisan army in 1942 as doctor of the Mostar battalion, head of the 3rd division and partisan army supreme command surgical staff. He became a member of the Communist Party in June 1943. Papo graduated from the military medical academy in Leningrad in 1947 and became chief army surgeon and head of the surgical department of the army medical academy in Belgrade.

After the war, Papo turned to heart, lung and respiratory system surgery. His greatest achievements were in heart surgery. He performed some 2,000 open heart operations and gave some 400 of his patients artificial heart valves.

Papo was elected as assistant professor in 1950, an associate professor in 1953 and professor in 1956. He also advanced in his military career. In 1975 he was promoted to general-colonel of the Yugoslav Army's medical unit.

Between 1963 and 1966 he served as Surgical Section's President. That period saw very intensive work by the Section. He invited prominent surgeons from abroad to hold lectures at the Section's meetings.

He became a correspondent member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) in 1961 and a regular member in 1968. He was also a correspondent member of the academy of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Peru, a member of the French surgical academy and many international associations. He won the AVNOJ (the Antifascistic Council for the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia) and Belgrade October awards. He also received a number of Yugoslav and foreign decorations.

Professor Papo published 217 works in extenso, 13 of which abroad. He edited the textbook War Surgery.

Professor Papo served over 30 years as chief of staff of the Military Medical Academy. He retired in 1982 and died on October 14, 1996 at 83 years of age and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Belgrade