Basic Medical Sciences & Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
Cytometry A. 2013 May;83(5):424-38. doi: 10.1002/cyto.a.22296. Epub 2013 Apr 17.
Only a few inventors can be said to have made as great an impact on mankind as Wallace Coulter. His inquisitive mind and ability to see well beyond what existed served him well for 40 years of inventing. So many of the fundamental tools that exist today in the area of hematology were derived from or driven by Coulter's inventions that he could be called the most technological innovator in the field of modern hematology. In achieving these discoveries Wallace Coulter was clearly capable of visualizing future opportunities that few others recognized. His vision was combined with an uncanny ability to translate his ideas into products. He developed a large number of tools that shaped the fields of cytometry, image analysis, and industrial materials. His understanding of the future power of computation drove him to link these technologies in a unique way. In the end, Coulter shaped the technologies that ultimately drove hematology in a new direction, one that remains on a critical pathway linking technology innovation all the way to true translational impact. It was said of Henry Ford that "[h]e has no notion that wealth has made him great, and any one who is imprest merely by his wealth bores him. In his personal contacts he likes to dodge the subject. He would prefer to talk with a machinist about machinery, or with somebody who likes birds about birds. In these contacts, he asks no deference; and if he gets it, he suspects it is mere deference to wealth, and that ends his interest."(1) The same could be said of Wallace Coulter, who, like Ford, understood the concepts of mass production and customer service. Coulter had the ability to recognize the opportunity and fulfill the need for development of a blood-cell counter that could be placed in every pathology laboratory, and in so doing transformed a field from a qualitative to a quantitative environment. Every person who has ever entered a medical lab, hospital, or doctor's office has felt the impact of Coulter's discovery.
只有少数发明家可以说是对人类产生了与华莱士·库尔特尔（Wallace Coulter）一样重大的影响。他好奇的思维和超越现有视野的能力使他在 40 年的发明生涯中受益匪浅。当今血液学领域中存在的许多基本工具都源自或受到库尔特尔的发明的推动，因此可以说他是现代血液学领域最具技术创新性的人。在实现这些发现的过程中，华莱士·库尔特尔显然有能力预见其他人很少能意识到的未来机会。他的远见卓识与将想法转化为产品的非凡能力相结合。他开发了许多工具，塑造了细胞计数、图像分析和工业材料领域。他对计算未来力量的理解促使他以独特的方式将这些技术联系起来。最终，库尔特尔塑造了推动血液学朝着新方向发展的技术，这条新方向仍然是一条将技术创新与真正的转化影响联系起来的关键途径。据说亨利·福特（Henry Ford）“[h]e 没有意识到财富使他变得伟大，任何仅仅因为他的财富而对他印象深刻的人都会使他感到厌烦。在个人接触中，他喜欢回避这个话题。他宁愿与机械师谈论机械，或者与喜欢鸟类的人谈论鸟类。在这些接触中，他不需要尊重；如果他得到了尊重，他会怀疑这只是对财富的尊重，这会结束他的兴趣。”（1）华莱士·库尔特尔（Wallace Coulter）也是如此，他和福特一样，理解大规模生产和客户服务的概念。库尔特尔有能力认识到机会，并满足开发一种可以放置在每个病理实验室中的血细胞计数器的需求，从而将一个领域从定性环境转变为定量环境。每个进入过医疗实验室、医院或医生办公室的人都感受到了库尔特尔发现的影响。
