Albert Eckstein

Albert Eckstein (9 February 1891 – 18 July 1950) was a German pediatrician who in exile had worked towards improving maternal and child care in Turkey. Born in Ulm in 1891, Eckstein initially worked as a physician at the University Hospital of Düsseldorf from 1920 until 1935, while also becoming head of pediatrics department there in 1925, after working as an assistant doctor at the University of Freiburg for ten years following WWI. Later in 1935 he moved to Turkey to escape Nazi persecution, where he went on two tours one in 1937 and other in 1938 to report on problems and demographics in Anatolian villages. It was during these trips that he had worked on reducing malaria and noma in villages by finding treatments such as sulfonamide and establishing health clinics throughout Turkey. The number of cases for malaria had been reduced and for noma, it completely died out with the last recorded case being in 1978. After WWII, he founded the pediatrics department in Ankara University which he also led from 1945 to 1948. His proposal in 1948 for establishing a 300 bed children's hospital in Ankara was rejected which led him to resign from his post on November 1948 and return to Germany. He came back for one last lecture in Ankara University on 27 December 1949. On 18 July 1950, he died in Hamburg in presence of his family and is laid to rest in Cambridge, England.