Inventors and Innovators: Leslie Geddes

Purdue graduates continue to develop innovations and breakthroughs that help move the world forward. Purdue Today will highlight these inventors and innovators by featuring two each month in the Purdue Today newsletter and on social media.

Today, we are featuring Leslie Geddes.

Geddes was Showalter Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biomedical Engineering. In 2004, Geddes received Purdue's Outstanding Commercialization Award to recognize his 30 patents, many now licensed by Indiana companies. Patents and technologies emerging from Geddes' laboratory have generated more than $15 million in royalties for Purdue.

He received the 2006 National Medal of Technology from President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony in 2007. The award is the nation's highest honor for technological innovation.

Among the accomplishments during his career spanning 50-plus years were innovations ranging from burn treatments to miniature defibrillators, from ligament repair to tiny blood pressure monitors for premature infants. Geddes died in 2009 at the age of 88.

The Inventors & Innovators website contains Purdue alumni from business and industry; technology; medicine and health; and the food and consumer industries.