| Hubertus Strughold | |
|---|---|
Hubertus Strughold
|
|
| Born | June 15, 1898 Westphalia, Germany |
| Died | September 25, 1986 San Antonio, Texas |
| Alma mater | Göttingen |
| Known for | Space medicine, Nazi human experimentation |
Dr. Hubertus Strughold (June 15, 1898 – September 25, 1986) was a German doctor, Nazi, and prominent medical researcher during the early twentieth century. An emigre to the United States after World War II, he is also known as "The Father of Space Medicine".[1] He was the author of over 180 papers in the field of space medicine. In the 1990s, his wartime experiments on concentration camp prisoners were acknowledged and greatly diminished his reputation.
Contents |
Strughold was born in Westphalia, Germany, and educated at Göttingen where he received a doctorate (Dr. med. et phil.) in 1922. He worked on aviation medicine research from 1927 as Professor of Physiology at Würzburg. He also spent time in the United States. In 1935, he became director of the Research Insitiute for Aviation Medicine (Luftfahrtmedizinisches Forschungsinstitut), Berlin. As the head of Nazi Germany's Air Force Institute for Aviation Medicine, Strughold participated in a 1942 conference that discussed "experiments" on human beings carried out by the institute. The experiments included subjecting inmates of the Dachau concentration camp to torture and death by being immersed in water, placed in air pressure chambers, forced to drink sea water and exposed to freezing temperatures. Strughold later denied approving the experiments and said he learned of them only after World War II. After the war, he was Professor of Physiology and Director, Physiological Institute, University of Heidelberg.[2]
Strughold was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. He first coined the term "space medicine" in 1948 and was the first and only Professor of Space Medicine at the School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. In 1949 Strughold was made director of the Department of Space Medicine at the SAM (which is now the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM) at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas). He played an important role in developing the pressure suit worn by early American astronauts. He was a co-founder of the Space Medicine Branch of the Aerospace Medical Association in 1950. He was named Chief Scientist, Aerospace Medical Division in 1961. The aeromedical library at Brooks AFB was named after him in 1977, but later renamed because documents from the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal linked Strughold to medical experiments in which inmates from Dachau were tortured and killed.