Hans Hirschfeld (hematologist)

Hans Hirschfeld (1873 to 1944) was a German-Jewish hematologist born in Berlin. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin from 1891 to 1897 and began his residency at Moabit Hospital. From 1910 he worked at the cancer institute of the Berlin Charite, obtained his habilitation in 1919 with a thesis on pernicious anemia, and became a professor in 1922. He is known for his studies of blood diseases and his research on the pathology of the spleen, and with Artur Pappenheim he worked on the microscopic differentiation of blood cells. His books include a study of diseases of the spleen, a textbook of blood disorders for physicians and students, and a handbook of general hematology written with Anton Hittmair. He edited several hematological journals, among them Folia Haematologica. After the Nazi civil service law of 1933 he lost his teaching licence and his right to practise, and he was deported to Theresienstadt in October 1942, where he died in 1944.