Einthoven's lifetime work was dedicated to electrocardiography and its extended applications. He qualified in 1885, and in the same year was appointed professor of physiology at Leiden where he worked until his death. For his development of the electrocardiogram he was awarded the 1924 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.

He entered the University of Utrecht in 1878, planning to specialise in ophthalmology and to follow his father into the army and colonial medical …