Alexis Carrel was a French-born US surgeon and biologist. Carrel was a member (1912–1939) of the Rockefeller Institute, New York City. He was awarded the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine his development of anastomosis, a surgical technique for suturing (sewing together) blood vessels, thus paving the way for organ transplants and blood transfusions. Carrel and Charles Lindbergh invented an artificial heart.