Karin Büttner-Janz

Karin Büttner-Janz (born 1952) is a German physician who first won fame as a gymnast and later became a specialist in orthopaedics and spine surgery. As Karin Janz she won Olympic gold on the uneven bars and vault at the 1972 Munich Games for East Germany, and she then left competition to study medicine at the Humboldt University in East Berlin. She did her clinical semester at the orthopedic hospital of the Charité and specialized in orthopaedics. Together with her colleague Kurt Schellnack she developed the first artificial intervertebral disc, known as the Charité Disc, and her habilitation treatise rested on that work. From 1990 to 2012 she was chief physician at clinics in Berlin, including trauma surgery and orthopaedics at the Vivantes clinic in Kreuzberg from 2008 to 2012. She became a professor of orthopaedics at the Charité in 2005, served as president of the Spine Arthroplasty Society from 2008 to 2009, and founded the Spinefoundation in 2012 for spinal research and public awareness.