Ernst Gräfenberg

Ernst Gräfenberg (1881 to 1957) was a German-born physician and scientist who worked mainly as a gynaecologist. Born in Adelebsen near Göttingen, he studied medicine at Göttingen and Munich, took his doctorate in 1905, began in ophthalmology at Würzburg and then moved to obstetrics and gynaecology at Kiel, where he published on cancer metastasis and the physiology of egg implantation. From 1910 he practised in Berlin and became chief gynaecologist of the municipal hospital in Britz. In 1929 he published his studies of the Gräfenberg ring, the first intrauterine device for which usage records exist. His later work on the role of the urethra in female sexual response gave his name to the term G-spot, which others coined in 1981. As a Jew he was forced out of his hospital post in 1933, was imprisoned from 1938 to 1940 for an alleged offense, and then emigrated to New York, where he practised until his death in 1957.