Robert Machemer (16 March 1933 in Münster[1] – 23 December 2009 in Durham, North Carolina) was a German-American ophthalmologist, ophthalmic surgeon, and inventor.
In 1953, when Robert Machemer completed his Abitur, he worked for six months in a steel mill to partially finance his medical school education.
In 1966 he received a two-year NATO fellowship and moved, with his wife and three-year-old daughter, to Miami to work at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.
He remained at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute until 1978, when he became the chair of Duke University Medical School's Department of Ophthalmology, serving in that capacity until 1991 and had his retirement as professor emeritus in 1998.
[10]) Dr. Machemer is best known for his development of pars plana vitrectomy, a surgical procedure which has revolutionized the treatment of posterior segment eye diseases during the last quarter of the twentieth century.