Oscar Gans

Personal

Vocation

German-Jewish dermatologist of crucial importance for the development of dermatology in Germany. He is the author of the standard work Histology of Skin Diseases and was a member of numerous specialist societies as well as 1953-1960 President of the German Society of Dermatology. In 1957 he received the Great Federal Service Cross. The German Dermatological Society awards an Oscar goose prize "for special scientific achievements in the field of experimental dermatology". Oscar Gans was the son of Isaak Michael Gans (1846-1909) and Henriette Herz (1857-1929). From 1907 to 1912 he studied medicine at the universities of Bonn, Freiburg and Berlin, and in 1912 he was a doctor in Freiburg. After his further training with Paul Gerson Unna in Hamburg, he took part in the First World War as a doctor. In 1919 he qualified as a professor in dermatology and venereology. In 1924 he received a reputation as an extraordinary professor at Heidelberg University. After his guest professorship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, USA, in 1926-1927, he was appointed full professor and director to the dermatology polyclinic of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. As a Jew he was forcibly imprisoned in 1934 and then moved to retirement. In 1934 he emigrated with a British passport to India. He opened a private practice in Bombay and devoted himself to leprosy research. From 1935 to 1949 he was a member of the board of the Jewish aid association in Bombay. After 1946 he returned to Germany and taught at the universities of Munich and Frankfurt am Main. In 1949, he was appointed Director of the Department of University Skin Care in Frankfurt. From 1950 to 1951 he was dean of the medical faculty and from 1953 to 1954 rector of the university. After his retirement in 1959 he lived in Comano in the Ticino. He died on 28 May 1983, aged 95, in Limpsfield, Surrey, England. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)