Lazar C. Margulies

Margulies was born in Galicia, which later became part of Poland.[1] He served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I in their medical corps.[2] Margulies completed his studies at the University of Vienna in 1921.[1] He worked in Vienna from 1929 until 1938.[2] Later, as the Nazi movement spread, he was "expelled from the hospital" because he was Jewish.[1] He fled to Britain in 1940.[2] In 1941 he emigrated to the United States where he settled in New York City.[1] Margulies started working at Mount Sinai Medical Center in 1954.[1]

Margulies was working in the obstetrics department of Mount Sinai in 1958 when he suggested his idea for a new IUD to the head of the department, Alan F. Guttmacher.[3] Margulies has successfully used IUDs in Berlin.[4] Guttmacher approved Margulies' idea to create a safer type of IUD using plastic.[3] Margulies developed a spiral-shaped IUD in 1960.[1] It was made of thermoplastic and introduced in a thin tube and then "expelled with a plastic plunger."[1] After it was expelled, the plastic IUD retained its shape inside the uterus.[4] The method of insertion Margulies developed meant that a woman's cervix did not have to be dilated for the insertion to take place.[4] Margulies' method solved many problems inherent in metallic IUDs.[5] Guttmacher allowed Margulies to do clinical trials which were successful.[4] Margulies presented the clinical results and demonstrated the plastic IUD at the first international symposium on IUDs in New York in 1962.[6] His invention was patented in 1965 and assigned to Mount Sinai by Margulies.[2][7]

Margulies died in 1982 of a cerebral hemorrhage[1] in Manhattan.[2]

• Coil Spring Intra-Uterine Device and Method of Using (patent)