Paul Anton Cibis (26 June 1911 – 30 April 1965) was a clinical ophthalmologist, surgeon and pioneer of modern vitreoretinal surgery.
As part of Operation Paperclip Cibis came to the United States and performed research for the U.S. Air Force and studied the effects of atomic weapons testing on the eye.
He was an internationally recognized expert in retinal detachment surgery and pioneered the use of liquid silicon for this procedure.
Upon appointment to Heidelberg, and at the outbreak of World War II, Cibis was quickly drafted into the German Army (Wehrmacht).
[1][2][3] During the years 1949 to 1955, he was a research ophthalmologist for the United States Air Force, School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field in Texas.
In 1965, he died of a heart attack at St. Louis, Missouri shortly after his return from England where he had attended the Annual Meeting of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom.
The work involved the visual and physiological problems of aviation, space travel and atomic weapons testing, including flashblindness.
[6] The team of Cibis, Brown and John E. Pickering utilized Rhesus monkeys to study the effect of gamma radiation on the retina.
In 1955, Dr. Bernard Becker offered Cibis a position in the Department of Ophthalmology at Washington University School of Medicine.
The surgical techniques he pioneered and developed, involved directly operating on the vitreous to repair retinal detachments.
[1][2][3] In 1949, Docent Dr. Paul Cibis was granted the Albrecht von Graefe Award by the German Ophthalmological Society of Heidelberg for the years 1940 to 1948 inclusive.
[17] In 2002, the Paul A. Cibis Distinguished Professorship of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences was established by an anonymous donor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St.