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.
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